I was twice a hostage due to Caitlan, letter reads
In a letter sent to his in-laws while he was in jail after his arrest, Joshua Boyle blamed his wife, Caitlan Coleman, for once again landing him in captivity only months after they were freed from a five-year hostage ordeal in Afghanistan.
Following his arrest on assault and sexual assault charges, Boyle was held in custody for more than five months. He was granted bail in June 2018.
“I seem to be a hostage again. Caitlan appears to be the reason again,” Boyle wrote in the letter, dated Jan. 21, 2018, read in court Thursday.
“Not that I’m angry,” Boyle continued in his letter, “but I’m sure you’ve wondered how things managed to go so belly-up in Afghanistan.”
Boyle has already testified that he blamed Coleman for their capture in Afghanistan.
He has said they were kidnapped one day after she loudly blasphemed during an emotional fit in a Kabul guest house.
Boyle told court Thursday, his final day of testimony, that at the time the letter was written he was closer to Coleman’s parents in Pennsylvania than to his own.
To highlight that fact, Boyle noted that while the Colemans financed his 2011 honeymoon trip to Central America, his own parents only found out about the marriage after the couple’s capture in Afghanistan.
“The Boyles learned we were married, I believe, from the FBI, when the FBI told them,” he said.
In cross-examination, Crown attorney Jason Neubauer suggested to Boyle that he had written the letter to ingratiate himself with the Colemans and to manipulate them into pressing their daughter to drop the charges.
Boyle rejected that idea, testifying that the letter was written to let the Colemans know that no matter what happened it would not change his deep affection for them.
Neubauer repeated his suggestion that Boyle was “buttering up” the Colemans so they would ask their daughter to retract her allegations. But Boyle said he didn’t expect that to happen.
“Caitlan’s parents have very little influence on her,” he testified. “As I said, no one controls Caitlan.”
In the letter, Boyle told the Colemans: “I still love both of you and I still love her — crazy and as masochistic as it seems to outsiders.”
Noting that he had by then formulated a plan to divorce Coleman, Neubauer suggested that the only reason for such a sentiment was to manipulate her parents. Boyle disagreed.
“I don’t think I’d say it was crazy and masochistic to love their daughter if I was trying to manipulate them; it’s one step short of saying your daughter is bats--t insane. I don’t think it’s ingratiating.”
In his seventh day on the witness stand, Boyle also revealed that he filed for divorce from Coleman after the birth of their fourth child.
Neubauer closed his cross-examination late Thursday, and the defence is not expected to call any more evidence.
Boyle, 36, has pleaded not guilty to 19 charges, including assault, sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, forcible confinement, criminal harassment and public mischief.
The Crown and defence are expected to make final arguments in the case in late September.