A Murder in Mansfield

The Setup: A son seeks answers with the help of Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA). Collier Boyle was 11 on New Year’s Eve 1989 when his father, John, bludgeoned his mother in their Ohio home and hid her body under the basement floor of a newly purchased place in Erie, Pennsylvania. Twenty-six years later, Kopple accompanies Boyle to his childhood house, to a reunion with detectives — and to prison to ask Dad for the truth.

The Most Disturbing Bits: Early on, we see archival footage of an eerily composed preteen Collier testifying at John’s trial. Video evidence of his mother’s body being extracted from her concrete grave is horrific. Yet John’s selfish, occasionally angry letters to his son after his conviction are almost as upsetting.

Try to Wrap your Brain Around… John’s protestations of innocence. When the two men sit down at Marion Correctional Institution, he

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