Collier Landry on becoming famous for his father's "heinous" crime

Collier Landry was just 12 when he appeared as the lead witness in his mother Noreen's murder trial.

He now co-hosts a podcast called The Survivor Squad.

In 1990, Collier (now 45) was thrust into the American media spotlight when he testified against his father for murder.

Collier had overheard the killing of his mother, and once his father left the house grabbed his mum's phone and a stuffed animal in which he'd hidden the phone numbers of her friends.

When the police arrived the next day, Collier's grandmother (his father's mother) would not let him speak to them, but the following day he was able to get a moment alone with a visiting detective: "I told him 'I go back to school tomorrow, give me your card'."

Collier feels very grateful that the detective visited his school and eventually they worked together to gather clues that his father had committed the crime.

"I had a safe place where I could talk, that was school… and thank god that the police detective came in. I think he thought I was off my rocker. But eventually, he was like 'there's something to this kid's story'. And for me to be able to share it with him so openly in such a safe space is absolutely incredible because not a lot of people get the opportunity to do that."

Collier was eventually able to provide the police with enough information to secure his father's arrest. But in the process, the 12-year-old lost not only both of his parents, his home, his dog and his newly adopted three-year-old sister - he also lost relationships with extended family members. 

"I was thrown into the foster care system so it was just like 'there you are, there's the wolves'."

In foster care, while the trial was underway, Collier wasn't allowed to view any media or speak to anyone.

"It was like the OJ Simpson trial in my town. Everyone was talking about it. It was always on the television, was always in the newspaper so I wasn't allowed to read the newspaper or watch TV … it was very odd."

Collier says he became "a little celebrity" for all the wrong reasons.

"[The fame] wasn't because of who I was in a positive light. It was because my father did this heinous act, and I was on television, testifying and newspapers and all of this … I wasn't known for something positive, I was known for something negative. There was always a stigma that haunted me my entire life. And that also was a motivating factor to keep my head level and just move forward and do something with this."

When processing trauma, it's more important to ask 'what now?' rather than 'why?', he says.

"I was determined, right there as a child, to say 'I'm not going to succumb to this, I'm not gonna let this monster destroy me, I'm not gonna destroy my family, I'm not gonna let him destroy what my life could be'. This is not to say that I haven't had my struggles, of course, I have, you know ... just insecurities from childhood, and, you know, the fight-flight-appease. And I had a very tumultuous relationship with my father for my entire life, right, so there's a lot of damage and wounds that are still there.

"I just didn't see going down a dark road as being a path that was even a possibility for me. I didn't even see it as an option. I just said 'I'm going to do something positive with this'. And I said that the morning that my mother was missing, and I made that decision right then and there that this is not going to destroy me, this is not going to break me, I'm going to move forward. And whatever this looks like, it's just going to be one foot in front of the other, you know, chop wood and carry water. The fundamentals. Just do it."

"I think you see that with a lot of people that go through traumatic events - they get out and they do something. And when you do something about it, you feel like you're somehow in control of that. Because all the control was taken away from you."

Collier says he gets his resilient spirit from his mother Noreen.

"Watching myself on the witness stand, I go 'I haven't changed one bit. It's still the same person. my mother used to make a joke 'He's 10 going on 40' but she really was right because I haven't changed that much since I was that kid.

"The courage, or whatever you want to call it, or maybe the naivete of going up against a monster at that age... it's still the fundamental core of who I was, and who I continue to be and who I am today. I most certainly don't regret it, that's for sure. I'm proud of myself.

"I knew at that age that I would become this age. And I would have to look at myself in the mirror, and I knew it was a choice. Would I be able to live with that for the rest of my life if I didn't do the right thing? [Testifying against my father] was, ultimately, the greatest decision I've ever made."

Collier encourages others to look ahead to the consequences of their choices, as he did in speaking out against his father.

"Can I live with the decisions that I'm making today and 10 years, 20 years, 50 years down the road? You want to live in the moment but you also want to understand that the decisions that you make will have a greater impact than you know right now, for good and bad ... You have to say 'Can I live with this with this decision I'm making right now, down the road?

"I think that my approach to it would be a lot different if I hadn't heard my father murder my mother ... if I wasn't there to witness the behaviour. If I didn't see his behaviour after the murder, and the clues that he was dropping, if I thought he was innocent, I might have a different view of it. It would have tainted me. But I knew what I heard and I knew what he did."

Times have changed since 1990 when Collier testified against his father. Now we see not only trial by media but also trial by social media, he says, with "internet sleuths and armchair detectives and podcasters and true crime aficionados" all weighing in on what may have happened.

Nothing matters but what the perpetrator did, how the family is reacting to this and coping with the loss of their loved one, and what the justice system is doing about it, Collier says.

"Those are the only things that matter. All this conjecture only serves, a lot of times, to distract and to injure those on both sides, by the way - the perpetrator and the victim's families."

As a young man, Collier moved to Los Angeles to become a filmmaker. He made the 2017 documentary Murder in Mansfield with Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple and later created the podcast Moving Past Trauma (previously Moving Past Murder).

On Moving Past Trauma, Collier had conversations with other survivors who'd come out the other side of harrowing experiences.

One was Terra Newell, the Californian woman who in 2016 killed her stepfather John Meehan in self-defence. (The life and death of John Meehan were covered in the hit true-crime podcast Dirty John and a TV series of the same name starring Eric Bana and Connie Britton.)

Terra and Collier were both wary of commodifying their real-life experiences but agreed that giving fellow survivors a platform to speak in their own words - "outside the media headlines, outside the conjecture from the tabloids, outside of the speculation, outside of the courtroom, outside of the perpetrator" - would be valuable.

On The Survivor Squad, their guests can feel safe sharing their stories with two people who've been through it, Collier says.

"When we're talking to them we're not mentioning the perpetrators. We're bringing them in and saying 'You tell us in your own words what happened' ... tell me your side of the story. Tell me how it affected you.' And it's really cathartic for them because it gives them the chance to set the record straight."

The survivors' stories can be a source of hope and solace to people suffering abuse in silence, he says.

"They can say 'that person got justice. That person got justice for their mother, themselves, their sister, their brother, their whatever'.

"Obviously, people get rich off [true crime]. If it bleeds, it leads, as they say in the news business. On the flip side, though, there are people that really tune into this to go 'I'm going through something similar'.

"If these stories were available when I was going through everything I might have tuned into them to say 'Oh, that person made it so I'm going to be able to make it, too ... … I would see people and be like, Oh, what is their story? I wonder how they made it through?".