A son speaks out
Greg Parsons’ mother’s murderer has day parole revoked; Parsons gives powerful victim impact statement
A Newfoundland man serving time time in B.C. for a gruesome 1991 murder in St. John’s has had his day parole revoked.
The parole board was concerned about Brian Doyle lying and breaching a serious condition of his parole. Another hearing will be held in 90 days.
In his victim impact statement, Greg Parsons said there never seems to be an end to the cruel and unusual punishment that started with Doyle viciously slaying Parson’s mother, Catherine Caroll, and saw Parsons wrongly convicted of the crime until DNA evidence proved otherwise.
“The impact to me and my family never ends, as I have been off work now over three weeks since I heard about this hearing and the fact that the parole board has concerns,” Parsons told the parole board Friday from St. John’s via a webcast viewable only to hearing participants and registered media — including Saltwire Network — originating from British Columbia.
“How can I make you understand how much I have been affected over the last 31 years mentally, emotionally and physically? There’s nothing I have not done over the years to find justice for my mom, yet it seems to fall on deaf ears. I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve suffered through this process for the past four years, and this year I have immersed myself so deeply into investigating the wrongdoings of this case that it occupies my mind 24 hours a day, seven days a week whether I’m sleeping or awake.”
Doyle, wearing a purple dress shirt and white face mask, was seated at a boardroom table with Corrections staff, including his parole officer and a halfway house staffer.
Parsons, with his wife, Tina, at his side, donned reading glasses to say aloud his nearly 45-minute victim impact statement.
While Parsons spoke, Doyle sat mostly looking down with his hands clasped. He showed little expression, even when Parsons read excerpts from a sting operation in which Doyle described gruesome details of the murder.
In early March, the parole board, having concerns about Doyle’s behaviour, ordered the hearing, board member Ryan Nash explained to Doyle. Those concerns include Doyle being on online dating sites.
The recommendation from parole supervisory staff to the parole board was that Doyle’s day parole be continued.
Doyle had a kitchen job in a B.C. restaurant, though he is laid off currently due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
HID RELATIONSHIP
The biggest concern is that Doyle did not immediately report a relationship, as required.
He now has a partner, the board heard, and the woman is fully aware of his criminal history.
Doyle was put on notice as to the seriousness of the hearing, which was a wake-up call, Nash said, adding the concern of the board is always the protection of the public.
Doyle claimed he didn’t report the relationship because of his initial misconception of its nature.
Once his partner accepted his past, he said, he had a relationship to report.
“I know it was poor judgment,” he said.
Nash said there were three occasions that Doyle met the woman and did not report it.
“I would encourage you to be honest and forthright in your responses,” Nash told him.
“Why did it take you a full six weeks to report this relationship, understanding the requirements and knowing what you were serving a life sentence for?”
“Like I said, I was just hoping to have a relationship to report, and a lot of it, too, was just kind of nervousness and (being) a little bit scared as far as opening up,” Doyle said.
“Why would you make a decision to go into her home without informing your parole officer about that decision?” Nash challenged him.
“Just poor judgment,” Doyle replied.
Board member Catherine Dawson said she was also grappling with Doyle’s dishonesty.
“You used the word ‘withheld’ when in fact you lied,” Dawson said.
Nash also questioned him about comments that he had described himself as a chameleon, according to a programming report.
Doyle said he didn’t remember ever saying that.
“Who are you?” asked Nash, adding the term chameleon concerns him.
Doyle said it might have referred to his past street life as well as working legitimate jobs.
Doyle had claimed in a past hearing that the murder happened because his need for pills and sex was denied.
Since then, Nash said, Doyle has also denied a sexual component to the murder.
Doyle said there was a misunderstanding, and there was a sexual component as well as other factors.
“Yes, I went there hoping to have an encounter with her as well as to continue to get high, using drugs,” Doyle said during questioning by Nash and Dawson.
Meanwhile, Doyle told Nash his sobriety is going great, and he attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
MURDERER SAYS HE’S SORRY
Dawson described Parsons’ victim impact statement as poignant and asked Doyle what his view was of the harm caused.
“It kills me inside knowing the harm, the pain and suffering I have caused so many people, people that I have called friends, family, all the victims. … I am truly sorry and I wish there was so much I could do to try to take away all that hurt, that pain and suffering,” he said.
“It’s something I live with every day. I live with the hate in myself for what I have caused to everybody.”
He said he was a selfish coward back then.
Doyle did not refute anything Parsons said in his statement, and finally broke down when he said he let Parsons go through something that he should not have had to endure.
“I’m just extremely sorry,” Doyle said in his last comments.
53 STABS
Doyle, who was 50 at his last parole hearing, stabbed Carroll 53 times on New Year’s Day 1991.
After a night of partying, Doyle broke into Carroll’s home through a basement window and went into the kitchen to get a knife. He went into a bedroom, took off all his clothes and entered Carroll’s bedroom. When Carroll discovered Doyle, she got up and went into her bathroom, where he attacked her. Doyle then took a shower and got dressed as she was on the floor bleeding.
Parsons discovered her body the next day.
Doyle allowed his friend at the time, Parsons, to be wrongfully convicted of the murder in 1994. DNA evidence cleared Parsons in 1998.
Doyle was later convicted of second-degree murder.
JUSTICE GOT IT WRONG: PARSONS
Parsons said during his victim impact statement Friday he felt the Newfoundland and Labrador justice system botched and ignored evidence that he contends could have seen Doyle convicted of first-degree murder, as statements he made during a Mr. Big sting confession seem to indicate the murder was premeditated, including borrowing bigger shoes from a party to cover his own tracks, and that he went back to the party to create an alibi for himself. Parsons also said Doyle went to his mother’s house with sex on his mind, which indicates his intentions.
“I will never quit,” he said loudly to the parole board of his quest to see better justice for his mother.
He called Doyle a monster. “Imagine being convicted of slashing your mother to death over 53 times to the point where the casket was closed, as the damage to her face made her unrecognizable,” Parsons said in his victim impact statement.
“I stand here now 31 years after the crime, not only a victim of this brutal murder, but also a victim of the Newfoundland justice system for not properly prosecuting, Correction Services of Canada for not properly incarcerating, as well as the parole board for not giving me a voice this time last year when this murderer was granted day parole, as this technology was readily available. When the decision was made to grant day parole, I was told I would have no further say, and I had made some kind of peace with that. Yet here I stand today almost a year later to the day once again reliving this terror and travesty of justice as you say you have concerns. The rights of victims should always outweigh the rights of these criminals.”
DOUBTS REMORSE
Parsons told the board Doyle hasn’t shown remorse, and he doesn’t think he has been rehabilitated.
“It is now up to you, the parole board, to do your due diligence,” Parsons said.
“It is on you now to watch this guy to recognize how dangerous he is, for if he hurts another, rapes another woman … murders someone else, it will be on you and not me, because I have done everything I can to make sure that you have the information to recognize a dangerous offender as well as a sexual predator,” Parsons said.
In 2001, Doyle was under the belief that the undercover agent was inviting him to join an organized crime group, and had offered him $20,000 to murder his fictitious wife. Doyle admitted murdering Carroll and bragged he could set up the murder in such a way as to point guilt onto someone else.
Parsons said he paid nearly $3,000 to have the Mr. Big sting video transcribed, and said he was shocked.
“I hear his words in my head as he describes how he went to the kitchen and took a knife from the drawer, went up to my bedroom, disrobed and went to my mom’s bedroom with the knife and then got in bed with her naked,” said Parsons, adding he is sickened that Doyle has claimed in the past he had some sort of sexual relationship with his mother.
Parsons said emphatically that was not true and it further shames his mother’s memory.
‘SHIT HAPPENED’
According to the excerpts from the transcript cited by Parsons, Doyle made this comment about the murder: “She went to the bathroom and shit happened.”
When asked to clarify what he meant by the word “dirty” in describing the crime scene, Doyle, according to transcript excerpts in Parsons’ statement, had said, “On the window, on the f---in’ door, on the f---in’ floor, on the f---in’ walls, you name it.”
“I hear the words from his mouth describing how he slashed my mother to death and then he mimics the sound of her last breath,” Parsons said in his victim impact statement.
“He stayed at Mom’s house long enough for the washer to go through its cycle, because this is where they found the combined blood deposit of both Brian Doyle’s DNA and Mom’s DNA. I hear Brian Doyle’s voice saying how he disposed of the murder weapon in the city council yard and bragging to the undercover officer that he could bring him right to where the knife is, he knows it’s still there, and he laughs gleefully.”
Parsons said that when Doyle was asked by Mr. Big how it felt when the murder got pinned on Parsons, Doyle responded, “Felt f---in’ great.”
DOWN IN L.A.
Parsons said he is also concerned about a statement, according to the transcript, that Doyle is alleged to have made during the Mr. Big interview in which he claimed to have fired a full clip into a crowd in east Los Angeles, where he was living for a time under an alias after fleeing Canada. Parsons questions whether or not this information was passed to Los Angeles police and whether it had any connection to victim shootings or other crimes there.
In 1996, Doyle was charged in California with possession of cocaine. While in the United States, he lived on the streets, associated with drug dealers and committed property crime. He was also arrested in New Mexico for stealing a vehicle, and spent time in remand before being deported to Ontario.
Parsons explained to the parole board that he it took him years before he viewed the Mr. Big interview, due to post-traumatic stress disorder, and said there was evidence that was not factored into the original sentencing.
Doyle was granted another six months of day parole by the Pacific branch of the Parole Board of Canada in Abbotsford, B.C., in the fall of 2020.
Although the parole board will not reveal a prisoner’s location, Parsons has expressed outrage that Doyle was, prior to going to the halfway house, serving at “Club Fed” — the nickname given to the William Head Institution in B.C., which is surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean, about 30 kilometres northwest of Victoria.
Doyle is banned from contacting any of Carroll’s family and must not enter Newfoundland and Labrador.
APPROVES DECISION
“This is such a relief for my family now,” Parsons told The Telegram after the hearing.
Parsons said he and Tina spent a month going through transcripts of the Mr. Big sting evidence and other documents.
“It was worth every bit of the torture we’ve gone through the past month. The thing is, hopefully now this will wake up the justice system and they will have a hard look at the case.”
Parsons did not believe the apology Doyle gave at the hearing.
“His forced tears,” Parsons said.
“This guy is a sociopath. He’s got no remorse now. He is an animal, and he should be put back in the cage where he belongs.”