S04E15: THE MURDER OF CATHERINE CARROLL

On New Year's Day 1991, Catherine Carroll was murdered in her own home in St. John's, Newfoundland. Her son Greg Parsons was the one who found her lifeless body on the bathroom floor- stabbed a total of 53 times.

Soon after her murder, the police focused in on Greg as the culprit, despite there being zero pieces of forensic evidence tying him to the crime. Over the next several years, Greg Parsons and his family embarked on a fight for justice- a process that involved a wrongful conviction, an exoneration and an undercover police operation to find the real killer, with shocking results.

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EPISODE RESOURCES:

"A Newfoundland man is falsely accused of murdering his own mother | W-5 INVESTIGATION" (YouTube):
https://youtu.be/3zmhllRaFVs

"Newfoundlander Brian Doyle, convicted in Catherine Carroll killing, has his day parole revoked" (SaltWire):
https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/newfoundlander-brian-doyle-has-day-parole-revoked-in-catherine-carroll-killing-100579886/

Transcript

AJ: Coming up on this episode of Crime Family.

The Murder of Catherine Carroll is a case that happened on New Year's Day back in 1991 in St. John's, Newfoundland.

 Darren also says that from his opinion, "From that moment on, they weren't gathering evidence to solve the murder. They were gathering evidence to prove the case against Greg Parsons."

The new tests picked up an unknown DNA profile that was mixed with Catherine Carroll's blood at the crime scene, and this DNA did not match Greg. The question then became, so if Greg didn't kill Catherine Carroll, then who did?

Brian Doyle: Till that (gasping sound). 

Undercover Cop: So you didn't leave until she was dead? 

Brian Doyle: Exactly. 

Katie: That's crazy that it's still there. It was not that far away and they didn't even look for it that hard or find it. That's crazy.

AJ: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crime Family. I'm your co-host, AJ, and I'm here with Katie tonight. Stephanie is not with us, but she will be back maybe next week. We'll see. So just Katie and I. For today's episode, I'm going to be telling you about the murder of Catherine Carroll, and this is a case that happened on New Year's Day back in 1991 in St. John's Newfoundland. This case isn't really widely known across Canada too well, I don't think, even though the details of it are pretty shocking. I'm shocked that it's not one that many people are familiar with. I myself wasn't even aware of it until recently when it was covered on an episode of the Canadian TV series W5. W5 did a really great episode on this case. A lot of the information from this episode is from W5 because there's not really a ton of other information out there on it. The W5 episode actually has a lot of great information that's not really out there and a lot of other sources. I'm assuming, Katie, you haven't heard of it. 

Katie: No, I have not. 

AJ: All right. So I'll just get right into it. So the story of this case begins on January 2nd, 1991 when 19 year old Greg Parsons makes a frantic 911 call saying that he found his mother murdered in the bathroom of her house. 

911 operator: Take your time my love. What's the matter? 

Greg Parsons: Come quickly please. I was trying to get in touch with my mother for two days. She's up on the bathroom floor. Oh my God. 

911 operator: Okay, is she breathing? Did you check?

Greg Parsons: I just peeked in the bathroom. There's blood everywhere. I don't know what happened. 

AJ: He says that there's blood everywhere and he's begging officers to come quickly to the home. Upon arrival to the house, police find a brutal scene. Catherine Carroll's body was found partially clothed and had been stabbed a total of 53 times. Greg says that the last time he spoke with his mother was just after midnight on New Year's Day, wishing her a happy New Year's. He said that he was concerned when his mother hadn't been answering his calls at all the rest of that day or into the next day, which is what led him to go over to her home at around 10:30 PM on January 2nd. When he went to the house, he found the front door locked and the upstairs bathroom light on. He says that he managed to get into the house through a basement window, and once he was inside, his mother's dog was crying and barking like crazy. The dog led him all the way up the stairs to the bathroom. The bathroom door was locked, so fearing the worst, Greg busts through the door and he's eventually able to get in and he finds his mother's lifeless body on the floor. Although there was no murder weapon found at the scene, it was immediately clear that a knife was the murder weapon cuz she had been stabbed, like I said, 53 times. Immediately an investigation into the murder begins, and it's not long before the police start to focus in on none other than Greg himself. Just a little bit of a history about Greg and his mother's relationship. Greg admits that he did have a difficult upbringing with his mother. His mother had a history of addiction and mental health issues, and she always struggled to make ends meet, and his father wasn't really in the picture much at all. She was a single mother and just financially she was struggling quite a bit. Greg says that he struggled to get food and proper clothing to wear to school. One of his memories is that he remembers being embarrassed to go to high school since he didn't really have suitable clothing that wasn't really clean and it didn't really fit well. He was always embarrassed about that. However, he did have a good group of friends and he did often have friends over to the house, and they would often hang out in the basement just jamming out and drinking beer like typical high school stuff. He and his friends actually were part of a rock band that they created in high school, and so they would spend lots of time playing music and having jam sessions in the basement. Greg ended up moving out of his mother's house into his own apartment when he was just 16 years old. However, he does say that he would always check in with her every day or every other day, and that's why he went over to her house when he hadn't heard from her in a couple days in January of 1991. Because he would always frequently do those check ins, he thought it was odd when he went, you know, one or two days without hearing from her. He did maintain, you know, contact with her, but I mean, their relationship, I don't know if it was, I don't really know the entire nature of the relationship, I don't know if it was completely strained. I mean, obviously he's in contact with her, so it's not strained. But he did move out at the age of 16. He had his own apartment and just said that, you know, his mother did have a lot of issues and struggled a lot when he was growing up. Like I said, the police really quickly start to focus in on Greg as being responsible for Catherine's murder, and the major reason for that was after investigators spoke with one of Greg's close high school friends, who ended up handing over a tape recording to the police of a song that Greg and his band had written called "Kill Your Parents." The episode of W5 actually plays a portion of this song. It's just a typical high school jam session, with the song called "Kill Your Parents." The police really latched on to this cassette tape with this one song. So together with this tape recording and the apparent "rocky history" between Greg and his mother, the police ended up charging him only eight days after she was found dead, with her murder. He was charged with first degree murder. It seems wild to me that someone could be charged with the murder with only the submission of circumstantial evidence and the absence of anything concrete.

Katie: Yeah, I was actually just gonna mention that. It seems there's not much to go on, yet he's still being charged. 

AJ: Yeah. It's pretty clear that the police had tunnel vision. I mean, we've seen this in other cases before where it's like they're just focused on, you know, getting who they thinks responsible, but they're not really looking elsewhere for any other leads. They're gonna latch onto any type of lead they get, no matter how big or small it is. I wouldn't really think that a tape recording with a song "Kill Your Parents" would be enough.

Katie: Yeah. I guess they don't have a lot of evidence that it is him, but do they have evidence that it isn't him and they're just brushing past that, or there's just really nothing?

AJ: There isn't really anything to go on. It's like they don't have anything to lead to anyone at this time, but they don't really have anything to lead to him either. So instead of it just being an unsolved cold case, it's like, "Well, we're just gonna arrest someone for it so that we can say we solved it even though there's nothing to go on." 

Katie: Right? Yeah. I guess having him is better than having no one, basically is what they're thinking.

AJ: Yeah. Early on there's nothing definitively saying it's not him. But you know, you shouldn't really still be able to charge someone with that little evidence. I mean, we've seen it, I'm sure happen before, but it's just wild to me. Like I said, the only thing, at this time that the police have to bolster this theory that Greg killed his mother is this tape. The police at that time thought that Greg's behavior after the murders was weird. The episode of W5 actually interviews a reporter named Darren Bent, and he was reporting on this case back in the early nineties when it happened. He tells W5 that he recalls the police thinking that the way Greg was acting was weird. That he "seemed cold. They never considered the fact that he might be in shock. He just found his mother." Darren also says that from his opinion, " from that moment on, they weren't gathering evidence to solve the murder. They were gathering evidence to prove the case against Greg Parsons." In later interviews, I mean, of course they interview Greg in this W5 documentary as well, and Greg says in interviews that there was not one piece of forensic or physical evidence that tied him to the crime scene. There was not a hair fiber, there was no DNA, in the form of fingerprints or anything like that, so not a shred of evidence. In fact, I mean, there were rumors that were swirling around town that there was a strained relationship between Catherine and Greg. Catherine had allegedly confided in people close to her that she was having trouble with Greg. But you know, he was just, you know, young. I mean, he was 19 at the time of the murder and he was just young, kind of an angsty teen. I mean, I don't really think it's anything too major. He still kept in contact with her every day or every other day. So, you know, it just seemed that the rumor mill was being taken as evidence in this case, and the rumors were just that, they were only rumors. It's wild to see that they just latched onto that, in the town. Which is bizarre to me. Then these rumors are also in addition to the fact that the police claim they were not able to corroborate an alibi for Greg at the time of the murders when the murder was suspected to have occurred. This was really the basis against him. I mean, obviously he provided his alibi, you know, saying he was out at a party and he called to check in, wish his mother Happy New Year, and then hadn't heard from her in in a day. They weren't able to corroborate that for whatever reason. It doesn't really go into too much detail in this W5 episode about why they couldn't corroborate that, you know, if they couldn't get in touch with people from the party or something, but for whatever reason they couldn't and they were just using that as. "Well, that proves that he's guilty." The tape that was provided by this friend with the song, "Kill Your Parents" on it doesn't exactly help his case either, of course, but it isn't a smoking gun. I mean, far from it. Angsty teens talk about hating their parents all the time, and while writing and singing a song about killing them is of course disturbing and going much too far, it's definitely nothing that a criminal investigation should be based around, which is what we see happen here. So after Greg's arrest, he has a long, drawn out trial. You know, it ends up being a couple of years, throughout this whole trial. On February 15th, 1994, which is, you know, over three years after the original murder, the jury reaches their verdict in the case and the jury finds Greg guilty of second degree murder, not the first degree murder charge that he was originally charged with. Greg and his lawyers fought the conviction and were successful in winning an appeal process. Greg was released from prison while awaiting this new trial. They were successful in getting the appeals relatively quickly. It was still a couple of years, but you know, that's still relatively quickly in the grand scheme of things. We've seen other people be in prison years and years before that happens. 

Katie: I'm curious. What was that appeal based off of? Because I mean, you hear people appeal all the time and I feel like more often than not they don't get that granted, so why was he so lucky in this case? I mean, lucky as in got the appeal granted.

AJ: Yeah. Well they stated in the W5 episode that he was granted his appeal based on the fact that there was no forensic evidence, because by this time DNA evidence was becoming a little bit more common. In 1991 when it originally happened, I guess DNA was a thing, but it wasn't, you know, as advanced. So then by the time that the verdict happened in '94 and you know, a couple of years after that, they're really starting to focus in on DNA and then they were able to argue that, you know, there was no DNA evidence because before DNA evidence was a thing, you know, people had to go off of eyewitnesses or whatever, right? So when you then suddenly have this new technology and then there's nothing in this that points to him, then you have that doubt that starts to peek in and I guess that's what happened. They were successful in arguing that. So I mean, it was a good lawyer. He must have had a good lawyer.

Katie: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 

AJ: The new trial wasn't scheduled to begin until March 2nd, 1998. Like I said, Greg was released from prison while he was awaiting the new trial, and in that time between his release from jail and his new trial, he returned to his life outside the prison walls. He returned to school, he was studying business, and he also married his high school sweetheart, Tina. She actually had stood by him throughout the entire legal process from the minute he was arrested and they had a son named Zachary during this time as well. Although, you know, he was out of prison, he still had to report to the prison or to the jail or to the police station anyway every day as part of his conditions for being released, so it wasn't really, you know, in some ways it was back to normal life, but it still wasn't normal life. He was still sort of in this limbo period. You know, he can't really feel free at all yet cuz he still has to undergo the new trial and he still has to check in every day. Greg says that the police were constantly on his back this entire time. So he says that they would frequently watch him. He ended up owning and operating a gym and he said that the police would drive by and park near the gym all the time just to keep tabs on him. And there's one time when he was smoking a joint behind the gym, the police just happened to be there and the officers allegedly, "sicced their dog on him," so he's still being harassed by the police at this time. I mean, they're still probably fairly certain that he did commit the murder for whatever reason and so they're not really gonna let him off easy. They gave him pretty much a horrible time. He describes it as torturous, you know, the way that they would watch him. You could imagine the toll that that would take on someone after years. Around the time that his second trial was set to begin, the original D N A from the original crime scene was sent back for testing, as new technology became available. They had hopes that these advances in technology would be able to prove that Greg Parsons was innocent of his mother's murder. The new technology was able to test minute pieces of DNA and required very little in order to produce results, whereas in the past, often a significant amount of DNA would need to be recovered, and technology could not always determine matches based on partial DNA at crime scenes. So now all of a sudden you have technology where you don't even need that much. You can just take a tiny little piece, and then you're able to get at least a partial match from just that small amount. So when they ran new testing with this technology, the results of these new tests proved what Greg's family knew all along that Greg Parsons did not kill his mother. The new tests picked up an unknown DNA profile that was mixed with Catherine Carroll's blood at the crime scene. This DNA did not match Greg. With Greg finally exonerated of his mother's murder in 1998, the question then became, so if Greg didn't kill Catherine Carroll, then who did? It was a four year process from his first trial to when he goes back on trial and gets exonerated. Overall it was seven years of his life that he had to be put through this. You know, he suffered a horrible loss at the age of 19 of his mother, and then he has to go through seven years of torture by the police and the system, which is pretty wild. But then everyone was, "Well, okay, you can exonerate him, but we still need to solve this murder." Nobody really knew anything else at that time because for years they had been bombarded with the fact that Greg had done it and people start to buy into, you know, "Well , oh, if he's found guilty then he must be guilty."

Katie: Yeah, they probably didn't even look at anybody else or investigate any other leads cuz they just thought it was him. Right? So they wasted all that time basically. 

AJ: Yeah. Now they're basically, you know, seven years after the fact and they're starting all over from scratch and who knows what evidence can change or can be lost in that amount of time. Obviously the crime scene isn't gonna be contained anymore, so now you're starting from the beginning. Seven years behind the ball. 

Katie: Yeah, and if anybody saw anything, they probably don't even remember or think it's significant now, seven years later. Right? So you lost maybe potential witnesses that saw something that day.

AJ: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's just a total mess. Shortly after Greg gets exonerated and you know, the focus is going back into who could have possibly done this, the police received an anonymous tip, which brought into question a childhood friend of Greg's named Brian Doyle. By this time in the late nineties, Brian was living just outside Toronto and the police had enough to go on based on this tip. Now, it doesn't say in W5 what the nature of this tip is, so we don't really know what exactly was said, but whatever it was, it was enough for police to start to focus on Brian. They decided to launch this covert operation and the police secretly placed Brian under 24/ 7 surveillance.

Katie: Oh, is this a Mr. Big operation? 

AJ: It is . 

Katie: Oh. 

AJ: Yeah. So they launched a covert operation and they placed him under surveillance and they were able to collect a cigarette butt that he discarded on the sidewalk, and they were able to test the DNA on that cigarette against the DNA profile that they found mixed with Catherine Carroll's blood at the crime scene. This test resulted in a partial match, and this was enough to bring Brian in for questioning. So even though the cigarette provided a partial match, the police wanted a completely concrete case, so even though they had this partial D N A, they decided to embark on an undercover sting operation known as Mr. Big. If you're a fan of this podcast, you've heard about that because we've covered it in a past episode, and it is a common tactic that's used in Canada. In this tactic, undercover police officers will often befriend the suspect and pretend to be an organized crime boss or something of that nature. And then they will, you know, start to build a relationship with this target that they're zeroing in on. The goal is to try to get a murder confession from them when they believe that they committed a murder. Usually it's by telling them that in order to become part of the inner circle or the crime group that they're trying to get into, they must provide them with a secret or something like that. This is in hopes that the target will share the secret of a crime that they committed, and then the recorded footage is used as evidence against them to convict them. So this tactic has been widely criticized in the past and it often leads to false confessions or, or can lead to false confessions, or it's considered entrapment in many ways, which is why it's illegal in many countries. Like I said, we covered it earlier this season. Katie did an episode. I'm surprised this case didn't come up in your research for the Mr. Big because as soon as it brought up the Mr. Big thing, I thought of you . 

Katie: Yeah, that's interesting cuz when I searched Mr. Big operations in general, I've never seen this one, so that's interesting.

AJ: Yeah. Yeah, and like I said, that's why it's interesting because this case isn't really that widely known in Canada, which is weird because it's a pretty crazy case. It is using the Mr. Big tactic, which is obviously, like I said, very controversial and I know that we probably talked about this in our previous episode when we covered it, but Katie, what are your thoughts on Mr. Big in general? Do you think it's a good thing or do you think it should be controversial or it should be illegal? Where do you stand on that? 

Katie: I don't know. I go back and forth. I feel like there are some cases where they take advantage of the person. Cause I mean, in some of the research I did for that other episode, they sometimes target people that are isolated or maybe, you know, have a lower IQ so they don't fully understand the situation and the police know that and jump on that to get them involved easier. Yeah, I don't know if it, I mean, if it works and it makes someone confess and they actually did do it then yeah, because we actually did another case in season one about that woman who tried to hire a hitman and that was actually an undercover Mr. Big guy. She actually confessed and she was actually guilty, so that worked out in that case. But I don't know, I go back and forth. 

AJ: Yeah, that was a Mr. Big case as well. Also we did do a case back in season one as well, the Karissa Boudreau case, which happened on the east coast of Canada too and that involved a Mr. Big operation as well. In that case it did lead to a confession and, you know, her mother was convicted of killing her. So it obviously can lead to confessions. At the end of the day, I mean, like you said, it ends up resulting in somebody going to prison when they did something wrong, then, I mean, you can't really argue with that. But also, I mean, it is entrapment and I can see the argument I guess for and against it. I don't really know where I stand on the issue. Even in that one that we covered this season, the Atif Rafay case, even that one, that was a Mr. Big operation as well. There's also an Amazon documentary about another case in Canada that used Mr. Big. So in all of these cases, you can see where it gets a little bit murky and it's hard to completely be for or against it because I do see the argument on either side, basically. In this specific case, Brian Doyle believed that the undercover cop was a kingpin who was trying to recruit him as the newest member of his organized crime operation. In reality, the police were just attempting to, you know, bolster a case against him for the murder of Catherine Carroll. The undercover, you know, they build rapport with Brian and eventually the undercover cop pretends that he's organizing a hit against this made up woman that he's pretending is a real person. Brian offers to carry out the deed in exchange for a hefty paycheck. So in this moment, Brian is videotaped as he describes how he would kill this woman who he believes is real and pin the murder on a neighbor. He explains that before he commits the crime, he would wander around the neighborhood to find belongings with the neighbor's fingerprints that he could then plant at the murder scene in order to frame them. He's describing a series of events where he would be murdering someone and then literally framing someone else for that murder. So in order to prove that he's up for this job the undercover cop, who's acting as the kingpin, says that he needs a secret from Brian in order to trust him to do the deed. It is then that Brian admits to murdering before and getting away with it. In this moment, he outlines how he killed Catherine Carroll on that New Year's night in 1991. He says that he left a New Year's Eve party wearing someone else's shoes. He went to his best friend's mother's house and murdered her, and then returned to the party as if nothing had happened. He describes how he did it. He says he entered the home through her basement window. He grabbed a knife from the kitchen and then went upstairs and removed his clothing. Then when Catherine came into the bathroom, Brian followed her in with the knife, and that's when he stabbed her a total of 53 times. After he finished attacking her, he actually stepped over her dying body to take a shower, so not only did he randomly kill his best friend's mother without any real reason he allowed his best friend to take the fall for it all. In this video, I'm gonna play a clip of it in a second, but Brian even describes to this undercover officer, the last breaths that Catherine takes and how blood covered the entire floor and the door and the walls. He says that he felt nothing when he was doing the deed and that he felt, " fucking great," when Greg was charged and convicted of the crime, which is the epitome of evil, to me anyway the way he says it, how he's just so callous and so cold. I'm gonna play a clip of the audio from this recorded confession. So what you're gonna hear is what I just described. You're gonna hear the way that Brian just nonchalantly confesses to an undercover police officer that he murdered before.

Brian Doyle: On the window, floor, on the door, on the wall. You name it.

Undercover Cop: What? 

Brian Doyle: Just blood, until that last bit of air coming up. I knew. 

Undercover Cop: So you didn't leave until she was dead? 

Greg Parsons: Exactly. 

Undercover Cop: So what'd you feel when you did it? That's my question. You pissed me off? Let's do it. 

Greg Parsons: Nothing. 

Undercover Cop: You felt nothing? 

Brian Doyle: Nothing. 

Undercover Cop: How'd you feel when Greg got nabbed? 

Brian Doyle: Felt great. 

Katie: It's crazy. I mean, it's one thing for you to murder your best friend's mother, but then to not care and then just sit back while he takes the blame for it is another thing. It's crazy to think how evil he would be and he really doesn't have a reason. He said he doesn't feel any remorse. It's unthinkable. 

AJ: Yeah, it's pretty wild to me. I know it's just audio that you heard on this episode, but we'll put a link to the full episode of W5 where you can see this video, and it's just crazy to see how he's acting, just so nonchalantly, just describing it as if he's just, you know, telling a story, that's not the story of how he killed his best friend's mother. So it's just very, very wild. 

Katie: It's crazy that he doesn't have a reason either. He just went over there and killed her and that was it, basically. He doesn't provide any kind of reason. 

AJ: I know. I'll get into it a little bit later, he sort of touches on a motive, but during this whole investigation that never comes up. So this was of course, the confession that the police needed and it seemed, it was pretty easy for them, I mean, once they started this Mr. Big operation, it wasn't too long of a time and when he actually confessed. So Brian was a very easy target for them and didn't really put up much of a fight. I guess he was just, you know, happily telling people this. I mean, he wasn't really too secretive, I guess. All it took was somebody to pretend to be this mob boss. 

Katie: Yeah, he seemed proud of it, the way he was talking about it, how there was blood everywhere and he stayed till she took her last breath. He was, you know, enjoying retelling it. 

AJ: Yeah. Yeah, and that's why he just couldn't wait to brag about it. I mean, at this point, when this Mr. Big is happening, it's, you know, nearly 10 years after the fact. So yeah, you can tell he just seems so proud of it. Which is gross. I mean, early on in the investigation they could tell there was water mixed with the blood, so the theory was that whoever did it had taken a shower after killing Catherine. So I guess they had that little piece of evidence. Then he explains the fact that he did take a shower after he killed her and stepped over her body and all of that gruesome detail. Of course, this confession was the smoking gun that they needed. So Brian was immediately arrested and he was extradited back to Newfoundland two face trial, and it was here where they actually went back to the scene and took Brian with them. Brian walked the police through the entire act and described how he did it. He explains that the dog woke Catherine up, so after Brian had entered the home, he started playing with the dog. When Catherine heard the dog, she gets up and he remembers Catherine saying, "What are you doing here, Greg?" before realizing that it wasn't Greg, but it was Brian. Then she told him to leave immediately after realizing it was him. Then the murder happens as I described before. He says that he, you know, took all his clothes off, then he went into the bathroom with the knife that he took from the kitchen and stabbed her 53 times. During this time when Brian is showing the police the crime scene and describing all of the steps of the crime, he even goes so far as to show the police the exact spot where he discarded the kitchen knife that he used to kill Catherine. A police video of this shows Brian taking Detective Robert Johnson to the exact location where he tossed it over a fence, which was located just a two minute walk from Catherine's home. This video was taken, on the W5 episode, it shows a timestamp of the video that they're showing, and this video was taken June 10th, 2001. This is over 10 years after the murder happened. When they go and search the area that Brian is showing them that he discarded the knife, the murder weapon is still there. It's exactly where Brian had tossed it nearly 11 years earlier. So during the initial investigation, the police never even bothered to check in the surrounding neighborhood for the murder weapon, which, if they had, may have prevented all of the hardship that Greg and his family endured for all those years. It's just wild to me that he could literally point them to the exact location of this knife that he used, and it's still there after nearly 11 years, which is wild to me. He says he just tossed it over the fence. 

Katie: That's crazy that it's still there. It was not that far away. They didn't even look for it that hard or find it. That's crazy.

AJ: I know. Obviously just goes to show how stupid they were. I mean, in any normal investigation, I feel like you would check, you know, or people would be on the lookout or the neighbors would be on the lookout for things or they would have tips that would call in. I just don't understand how he could toss it over a fence. It's not really clear to me where this fence is. This is someone's yard? I mean, I'm assuming no, because they would've found a bloody knife on their property. But for whatever reason, he just tosses it over the fence and it's still there 11 years later. 

Katie: Yeah, it could have just been over the fence, but in a bunch of bushes, so they didn't actually find it cuz it's behind bushes, maybe. That's what I'm picturing. Yeah, I can't imagine just in someone's fucking yard for 11 years and no one saw it. 

AJ: Yeah. It's crazy. So they already had enough evidence with, you know, the DNA on the cigarette that led to him, then this taped confession and then he's also pointing them to the murder weapon. So, I mean, you know he's giving them everything that they need basically at this point. I guess, like I was saying, it's just crazy to think that the police never even bothered to check the surrounding neighborhood for any murder weapons. But I guess you can really only see the evidence that you wanna see. I mean, the police were convinced that Greg was the killer back in the nineties, so they weren't really gonna look elsewhere for the answers that they believed that they already had. You know, in their minds it's like, why are we gonna search elsewhere and we know what happened? This case really just highlights the incompetency of the police during major investigations. Although it can't really be called incompetence when they aren't even putting in the effort. So it's not like they're trying and failing. It's like they're not even attempting to find the real answers. And it seems like they just wanted to frame Greg for no reason to make the investigation quick and easy for them. So I wouldn't call it incompetence, I just call it apathy, really. As a result of Brian's confession, he was charged with the first degree murder of Catherine Carroll over 10 years after the crime had occurred. However, a plea bargain was quickly reached between the Crown and Brian, and the charge was knocked down to second degree murder. This was a charge that Brian eventually pled guilty to, and in exchange for pleading guilty, there was no trial. The whole process from confession to arrest to plea bargain was relatively quick in comparison to Greg who had, you know, a three year trial. So Greg and his wife Tina were at Brian's court hearings for when he was in court. It wasn't like a trial, but he did obviously have appearances in court and in an interview with W5, Tina says that, "There are still people to this day who don't know an arrest was made because he was in and out of court in five days with a plea bargain." This is in contrast to Greg, who, "Had a five month trial on the news every single day." So you can really see it was nothing compared to what Greg had to go through for years and years. From the time it happened to the time he was convicted it was three years and his face was plastered all over the news in Newfoundland. Every detail was drudged up over his trial. But yet the real killer gets to go and give a plea bargain and, you know, relatively quietly, which is also crazy. Brian's ultimate sentence was life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. So in this episode of W5, that I mentioned, that's focused on this case, it shows that Greg has kept a lot of the things over the years from the trials, so he has a copy of the full transcript of the hours long recording between Brian Doyle and this undercover officer, that Brian confessed to and in court during Brian's proceedings, this recording or the transcript were never played in court or really mentioned at all, and so therefore, Brian being able to plead guilty to the lesser charge of second degree murder shouldn't have happened because the transcript and the recording shows that Brian planned the murder out, tried to arrange alibis and actively took steps to avoid being caught prior to the murder, which reflects a first degree murder charge, not a second degree. So Greg's wife, Tina, says that, "this was first degree murder, plain and simple." She explains that the video recording of his confession, along with the fact that he showed them where the murder weapon was and his actions after the fact, display a well thought out and evil murder versus just a crime of passion that, you know happened in the heat of the moment and he didn't mean it. So that's pretty crazy too, right? It's just crazy that there's this transcript out there that exists that proves that it's first degree murder, but he's still able to plea and get a lesser charge of second degree murder. Which is just wild to me.

Katie: Yeah. Why didn't they show that in court?

AJ: I know it's crazy.

Katie: Why wasn't that part of the trial? 

AJ: It's just, yeah, I know. It's crazy. That's why Greg and his family are so frustrated because he has this transcript literally in front of him, a copy of it, and he can see Brian describing all of the details of how it happened, which proves it's first degree, but he's still able to go for second degree. So I don't really know why. I mean, they just wanted to get Brian in and outta court as fast as possible. They didn't really focus on the real facts of the case, so they didn't even bring the transcript or this recording up in court. Also, Tina, when she's explaining this to W5, she says that she was told, you know, or the prosecutors say that there's no guarantee of a conviction if the case goes to trial, and therefore the plea bargain was a better route, and that's why they decided to go that route. But to me, it's crazy that they would think that because the police have a partial D N A match, a taped confession of Brian himself and him showing them the murder weapon, and participated in the framing of Greg by knowingly providing police with the "Kill Your Parents" recording. Brian was the one who actually gave the police the, "Kill your Parents" recording back during the initial investigation in an attempt to frame Greg, which is what happened. So it was crazy to me that the prosecutors were afraid that they weren't gonna get a conviction if it went to trial when they have all that evidence. But yet Greg was able to be convicted with no evidence. So it's weird that they would think like, "Oh, we have all this evidence, but we're still not sure." Versus like, "No, we definitely know it'll be a conviction." 

Katie: It is crazy. Yeah, maybe the controversy of the Mr. Big stuff came up, so they thought that maybe it would be seen as, you know, not a good source of evidence maybe, but yeah, it does seem kind of crazy that they have way more on Brian than they did Greg, and he still got less, you know what I mean? You know what I'm trying to say?

AJ: Yeah. Yeah. I guess. That's a good point too, about that Mr. Big. Maybe they were afraid that if the Mr. Big operation, obviously that would come up, that's how the confession was got, and maybe because it was so controversial, they just didn't want to be asked those questions and they thought it would taint the legitimacy of the confession or something. I don't really know. But also Tina makes a great point too, in W5 when she's saying that's on you as a prosecutor, and that's says a lot about your lack of skills if you don't think that you can get a conviction with all that evidence, when the other prosecutor was able to get a conviction on Greg with no evidence. So it's mostly the prosecutor was just insecure about his own ability and just wanted to do the plea bargain just to get something. 

Katie: Yeah, it's like he was not confident at all. He had almost a slam dunk case. All this evidence. He said, I'm too scared in case I lose . 

AJ: Yeah, yeah. So he might as well just take the easy route, which is of course saving his butt, but no one else's. It's just annoying. Well, I guess it's saving Brian's in the end. I mean, he is still gonna get a sentence, but not, you know, the maximum sentence that he could get. 

Katie: It's crazy. Were Brian and Greg, after Greg got out, was he still friends with Brian? Did they still hang out or did they cut ties after all this, before they knew that it was Brian?

AJ: Yeah, I don't think they were close at the time. I mean, they just referred to Brian as a childhood friend. But I think, and they said that he had moved to Toronto a while before the police actually started to focus on him. So I think he would've probably moved to Toronto, while Greg was probably in prison initially. I think they probably didn't keep in touch. It doesn't say explicitly, but I don't think that they were really in touch. I know that Brian went to the funeral of Catherine back in '91. They were still friends then, but not at this point. Tina also makes a point too to W5, she's contends that, you know, they wanted to rush the court proceedings and they wanted to get Brian in and outta there so fast because the whole process would just only highlight how the police failed the first time around. So the police and the prosecutors and everyone were just trying to save face and wanted to cover their own asses and didn't really care. That's probably why they just wanted to do it hush hush. You know, didn't really have much fanfare with Brian, just get him into a couple of hearings, get him to plea and that's it. They didn't want all of their misconduct to be brought up, I'm sure. 

Katie: Yeah, that's true. Just everyone take the easy way out and that's what they did. 

AJ: Yeah. So just cowardly all around basically. And the fact that they don't really care who they're impacting. They just care that, you know, they just wanna cover their own ass and they don't really care who they have to really throw under the bus in the process. So Brian spent seven years in a maximum security prison, and then he was transferred to a minimum security prison in British Columbia after seven years. In 2020 he was granted day parole. This was a controversial decision, which was then quickly revoked, partially in response to Greg's victim impact statement that he made at the hearing. Greg and his family are currently fighting to keep Brian incarcerated. When he's up for parole as he believes that he's a danger to society and will offend again. If you're wondering, like I said, what Brian's motivations for the murder was beyond just plain evil, it wasn't until August of 2022 when Brian admitted to a sexual motivation for the crime claiming that Catherine had rejected him sexually just before the murder, and so that's what his motive was, but that's all we really know at this time. So it's just crazy that he's now living in a minimum security prison on this really nice island in BC. So it's not as intense as you would think for someone who's so cold and evil as Brian is. He did get 18 years, life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. So hypothetically, I mean, he went to prison in 2003 was when he was sentenced to that, so 2021 would've been his 18 years. He was granted day parole after that, but then he was revoked when Greg did his victim impact statement. He could be up for parole again in another year or a couple of years.

Katie: I feel like he definitely would be a danger to society cuz I mean, think about when they were doing that Mr. Big investigation, he was totally willing to be a hit man for some other random person and he had no problem with that. So it was like, if that situation came up again, you know, he'd jump on it. It's crazy how dangerous he actually is. 

AJ: Yeah, that's a good point. It didn't take much coaxing for him to just volunteer or agree to do this hit. So he is definitely someone who would probably be looking to kill again. So it's just crazy, in another couple of years he'll probably be up for parole again and who knows if he'll ever get it, but the fact that it is even an option is wild. In that period of time when Greg was released from prison and the new second trial happened where he was exonerated, there was that four year period, he and his wife got married and they had a kid Zachary, so Zachary's now in his early twenties, and he actually works alongside his dad as a firefighter in St. John's. It ends up being, I don't wanna say fine, because it isn't but, you know, Greg's doing well now and so is his son. It was a long time coming and it sucks that they're gonna have to keep fighting to keep Brian in prison when that should just be a guarantee. 

Katie: Yeah. Did he get any kind of compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned? 

AJ: Not that I'm aware of. It didn't really go into depth too much about that, but I would assume there's probably some type of compensation that would come with that, but I don't really know. That's probably something that you'd have to push for yourself. I don't think they would just automatically give that to you.

Katie: I think you do have to sue the police department or something like that to get anything. 

AJ: Yeah. I mean, they're not just gonna give you money if you don't try to fight for it, so they probably didn't. I don't really know if he fought for it. He should have if he didn't, but I'm assuming maybe he, he probably did. He seems like someone who would be a fighter for that kind of thing. So I hope he did. I hope he and his wife are, I mean they looked well in the W5 episode. It is pretty recent. It just came out, you know, a couple of months ago. So I mean, they're doing well. Brian is in prison, but again, it's a minimum security prison, so it's not really what you would think for someone who is as calculated and evil as Brian. So definitely a crazy case. 

That is the case of Catherine Carroll and ultimately the story of the wrongful conviction of Greg Parsons and the rightful conviction of Brian Doyle after many years. But yeah, just a crazy set of circumstances, how it all went down. But did you have any final thoughts? 

Katie: No, it is a crazy one. I can't believe I haven't heard about it, especially since it's, you know, Canadian, on the East coast, close to home. That episode came out recently, but yeah, it's a new one for me, for sure. Definitely interesting. 

AJ: Yeah. It was actually our mom who told me about this episode. She was just telling me one time on the phone that she watched this crazy episode of W5, about this case, and she said, "Oh my God, you guys should look into it for the podcast because it's so crazy." So that's how I became aware of it. We'll put the link to that full episode in the show notes cuz it definitely is a really good watch. Even if you go into it, knowing all the events that happened, cuz I just outlined them it's still interesting to watch. They do play quite a bit of video footage from the Mr. Big operation, so definitely a good watch. Crazy case. We'll update you if, you know there's any new updates with Brian if he gets out of jail or if he's granted parole or, or whatever happens. But that's it for now. 

That does it for this episode of Crime Family. Thank you so much for listening. As always, if you're a fan of the show, you can follow us on all the social medias. We're @crimefamilypodcast on Instagram, crimefamilypod1 on Twitter and Crime Family Podcast on Facebook, you can also email us your case suggestions or your feedback for the show, what you like, what you dislike, anything you want to let us know. That's at crimefamilypodcast@gmail.com. We are on Patreon. You can become a patron, get lots of exclusive extras. Thanks for supporting the show if you are a patron and we'll put the link to the Patreon page in the show notes and we do have a merch store on Red Bubble as well. So we'll put the link to that in the show notes. You can get all of the Crime Family swag and support the show that way. Thank you so much and we'll see you next week for a new episode. Until then, take care. Bye. 

Katie: Bye.