- 1 day ago
- #survivalstory
- #truecrime
Collier Landry is here to share his experience that transformed his entire life on today's Unfiltered Stories show. He grew up with both of his parents, but his father was a narcissist who betrayed his wife. When Collier's mother found out about his husband's lover, he murdered her.
#survivalstory #truecrime
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
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#survivalstory #truecrime
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅
Facebook âž® https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB
Tiktok âž® https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Collier, and this is my story of how I survived my father murdering my mother when I was
00:0611 years old.
00:07I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
00:08I guess I became aware of how unique my childhood was because I always grew up in fear of my
00:15father.
00:16My father had a very violent temper. He was a rageaholic. He could go apoplectic in a second.
00:23So as a child, my father was gone a lot as a doctor, so I was my mother's constant companion.
00:30I didn't see anything wrong with that or odd.
00:33You know, I would see daddy on the weekends or daddy would come home at night.
00:36But I never really had like that much of a relationship with my father in a way, unless we were
00:41going as a family unit somewhere, right?
00:43As we got to moving to a small town in Ohio where no one knows you, it's a chance for
00:49a little bit of reinvention, I suppose.
00:51My parents took advantage of that and created their own backstories.
00:55Now, my father, who we will discover is a psychopath, is also a pathological liar, which sort of goes hand
01:01in hand with that.
01:02He would have stories of, you know, my father served in the Navy.
01:06My father was a doctor in the Navy.
01:08And I remember a story one time where he would tell me that he flew with the Blue Angels.
01:12He was a fighter pilot.
01:13And I would always ask, he's like, oh, they found my helmet.
01:16They're going to send it back to me.
01:17And my father was really hardcore on that Navy pilot thing.
01:21And this was a story that he was cultivating for the various women that he was seeing in his life.
01:26And those relationships took precedence over his family.
01:30And my mother shielded me from that.
01:33So I had no idea any of this was going on.
01:36My mother, let me just be very clear.
01:38My mother was most certainly not a pushover.
01:40My mother was very strict with me.
01:42My mother was very, I was a very well-behaved child.
01:44So my mother had been shielding me from another life that my father had been cultivating outside the household.
01:54And it wasn't until Father's Day.
01:57So on this particular day, my father went to go get a suntan at this location.
02:03And he, we run into this woman, Sherry.
02:07And she has arrived at this location and she has radio control cars and, you know, as gifts for my
02:14father and I for Father's Day.
02:16I happen to look over and I'm looking at Sherry who's staying there with my father.
02:21And I noticed a ring on her finger that looked like my mother's ring that she had.
02:26It was a very unique ring.
02:27And I was a very perceptive little kid because I was an only child up to this point.
02:32And I had, you know, an education with something that was so highly valued.
02:37I remember my perceptive wisdom saying, what are the odds here?
02:41And I said to her, I said, that's a really nice ring, Sherry.
02:44My mommy has a ring like that.
02:46And she giggled and she looked at my father.
02:48I noted all this.
02:49And I was like, okay, I'm playing with the radio control car.
02:52Then I turn and look and my father is kissing her.
02:55But it's a, he's making out with her.
02:56It's, it's not anything that I've ever seen my father do.
03:01I've seen it in movies.
03:03And I knew that that was not a friendly engagement.
03:07And my father says to me, he goes, look, bumper, which is my nickname that he called me growing
03:12up.
03:12Can you, I need you to do me a favor.
03:15I want you to tell mommy that you got the radio control cars from me as a present for
03:20getting good grades this school year.
03:23Don't tell her about Sherry or anything like that.
03:25And I was like, okay, dad, that was the first and only time I lied to my mother.
03:29And later on that evening, playing at the radio control car, and I was so overwhelmed with
03:35the guilt that I had told my mother a lie because I never, I was so overwhelmed with that guilt.
03:40I came in to the porch and she was sitting there with my sister and my parents had just
03:46adopted a little girl from Taiwan, my sister, Elizabeth.
03:50So my mother wanted a daughter.
03:52She was sitting there and I said to her, I said, mommy, I have something I need to tell
03:57you.
03:57And she said, okay.
03:58And I, and I told her, I said, you know, I said, I think daddy's having an affair.
04:02So that was a really big deal for me to tell that to my mother.
04:05Cause I was accepting that, okay, this is happening.
04:07My mother said, thank you for telling me.
04:09She's like, I'm not happy that you lied to me, but I understand why you did because your
04:12father asked you to do it.
04:13I'm sorry that he asked you to do that.
04:15She proceeded to go and tie the house and she got on the phone and it was very loud.
04:18My mother, unbeknownst to me, my father had crossed the line in the sand that was with,
04:25which was, you can do whatever the hell you want to do, Jack.
04:28Don't involve our kid.
04:29And once my father involved me and introduced me to his girlfriend, all bets were off.
04:32So it was many months later.
04:34So the holidays came and it was New Year's Eve, 1989.
04:38And my, my father came with my grandmother, who is my father's mother, who is extremely close
04:44to my mother.
04:45And mind you, they're in the middle of a divorce.
04:46So this is like a tenuous situation in the household.
04:49They brought my grandmother and we all had dinner and this, that, and the other.
04:52Then I went to bed at about 3, 18 AM.
04:55I woke up to a sound of a scream and I heard two loud thuds about 60 seconds apart.
05:01And I was petrified.
05:03I'm in my bed and I hear what I believe to be my father muttering, my father's voice
05:08muttering something.
05:09And then I count 12 footsteps as they walked down the hallway.
05:12And I always slept with my door open.
05:13I could see out of my peripheral vision, the feet standing in the doorway.
05:18And something told me, don't look up.
05:20Because I firmly believe that if I had looked up in that moment, I wouldn't be sitting here
05:25today.
05:25I don't know how, but I went back to sleep.
05:27The next morning when I woke up, I ran straight to my mother's bedroom and I noticed that the
05:31sheets in the bed was in a state of disarray.
05:33And I started looking for blood.
05:35Just, I started looking for, for any sort of clue as to what happened to her because my
05:39mother had never left my side.
05:41And I went downstairs and my father was sitting on the couch.
05:44He had a towel wrapped around his waist.
05:46And I said, where is my mother?
05:48My father said, well, Collier, mommy took a little vacation.
05:53And that's when I knew that my father murdered my mother.
05:56So my father had said, gone into this whole explanation of what had happened, what I had
06:02heard, the sounds.
06:03He said, my mother threw her purse at him and her credit cards, got into, left the house,
06:07slammed the door, got into a car that was waiting at the end of the driveway in the
06:10dead of winter, got into this car and just left with no purse, no money, no coat, no
06:15nothing, got into a car and just left.
06:16And he kept imploring to me, we're not going to call the police.
06:19We're not going to call the FBI.
06:20We're not going to call anybody.
06:21We're going to just wait for mommy to come back.
06:23And I was like, yeah, that's not happening.
06:24My father left that day and I had saved phone numbers of my mother's friends.
06:29I went upstairs, I got those numbers, I went into the bathroom, I started calling everybody.
06:33I told them exactly what happened.
06:34I said, you need to call the police.
06:35Police showed up at the house and my grandmother was apoplectic.
06:39She was so angry because your father said, don't call the police.
06:41I was like, I didn't call the police, Grammy.
06:43The police were walking around.
06:44My grandmother was hovering right behind me, so I couldn't say much.
06:47I told them sort of what happened.
06:49You know, they left.
06:50Call the next day to my mother's friends, like, what's going on?
06:54And they said, well, we filed a missing persons case.
06:56I was like, she's not missing.
06:57Like, she's like dead or he's done something to her.
07:01She's in a room somewhere.
07:02By chance, this detective by the name of Lieutenant David Messmore came out to the house.
07:07My grandmother was screaming at him, trying not to let him in.
07:09He comes in the house and he says, and my grandmother goes to call my father.
07:13So you're going to pay for that.
07:15I'm going to get my son on the phone.
07:16I said to David Messmore, I said, give me your, I can't talk here.
07:18Give me your card.
07:19You know, my mother would never leave me.
07:21Something has happened to her.
07:22Give me your card.
07:23Gave me his card.
07:24Next morning, I went to school because it was January 2nd, 1990.
07:27I walked in the principal's office.
07:28I gave her the card and I said, you need to call this guy.
07:30Came down to the school and I sat with Dave Messmore for probably hours and explained to
07:34him everything that I knew about my father, my mother and father's relationship, my father's
07:38girlfriend, all of this.
07:40I said to him, I said, I'm going to go home while my grandmother's downstairs dealing with
07:44my adopted sister.
07:46I'm going to pull the bookshelves out of the wall and look for her body because we had
07:49crawl spaces and houses.
07:51It's a thing, East Coast.
07:53So we looked for her purse to see because she wouldn't have left the house without this
07:56one purse.
07:57You know, my father says, I'm going to look for these things.
08:00I did that and I didn't find anything, obviously.
08:04And so over the course of the next 25 days, myself and this detective started piecing things
08:10together because my father is pretending to be very concerned about my mother.
08:14He has his attorney, his divorce lawyer over at the house.
08:17They're talking about things all the time and they're posting signs outside the house.
08:21No police are welcome because the police kept trying to come back to talk to my father.
08:24He wouldn't talk.
08:25He was never available.
08:26The lawyer is saying you can't come in the house.
08:28You can't talk to anybody.
08:28Nobody wants to speak to you, the press, whatever it is, right?
08:30My father takes me to his office and on the way back, he stops at a gas station and I'm
08:36watching him through the windshield.
08:37I start rummaging through his truck and in the center console, I find two photographs.
08:41One is of his girlfriend sitting in front of a fireplace that's covered in plastic with
08:45her two kids.
08:46And the second one is of a house that I've never seen before.
08:49I told police about that house a few days later.
08:52My father's behavior over this time, he's coming home and I noticed marks on his hands.
08:56So I'm telling police about that.
08:57My father came home one time and said he was, he was sore for moving boxes to his new office.
09:04I mean, all these strange behaviors were something that were, that was just massive red flags.
09:11I told Lieutenant Messmore this all over the course of January, 1990 until I found the pictures
09:17of the house, told him about this house.
09:19And then my father asked me, told me about a medical conference he had in January down in
09:25Florida.
09:25And every year we would go to these medical conferences in Clearwater Beach, Florida, but
09:29they were always during the spring when kids had off from school.
09:32So coordinate with everyone's schedules, not in, not in like January, not in January.
09:38He said, you know, we've just been such a rough go for you.
09:40I really want to have a, you know, a bonding trip because I know it's really hard on you
09:43with your mother being gone, having left the family.
09:46Because he kept saying she left the family.
09:48She left the family.
09:48And I told Dave Messmore, I said, I'm going to go to Florida with my father and I'm not
09:53coming back.
09:54I'm going to drown in the Gulf of Mexico.
09:55And two days later, less than two days later, I woke up to a house flooded with police detectives,
10:04men and women in white lab coats, contraptions, and also two people from Children's Services
10:09that said, you have 20 minutes to pack a bag and we're getting out of here.
10:12And I, I asked, I said, what about my dog?
10:16And they said, we'll come back for your dog.
10:17I never saw my dog again, who I loved very much.
10:18So I went with my sister and as we're coming down the stairs, I see all this police activity
10:23and I just know that, okay, things aren't going to be the same.
10:27They already weren't the same.
10:28That night I went to stay with my principal.
10:30That night I had probably the worst asthma attack of my life because all of my medicine
10:33was at the house.
10:34I couldn't go back to the house that was now a crime scene.
10:37And I thought I was going to die.
10:38Next morning I'm taken to the hospital.
10:40And after they stabilized me with a breathing treatment from a family friend who was a
10:44doctor, they tell me, Lieutenant Messmore found your mother, Collier, and she was dead.
10:49And that's where all this begins.
10:51I was angry to say the least.
10:54I knew my father had murdered my mother, but I was also extremely sad because my father
10:58murdered my mother.
10:59It's very hard to articulate the sense of sort of relief that you're not crazy, that what
11:04you thought to be true was true.
11:06Also that what you thought was true is possibly the most horrific thing you could ever imagine.
11:10I testified against my father to secure his indictment for murder of my mother.
11:14I heard a scream.
11:15I heard a thud.
11:16It was about this loud.
11:18I was then abandoned by both sides of my family.
11:20My mother's side of the family saying, we don't want anything to do with you because
11:23you look like your father.
11:24My father's side of the family saying, you're putting your father in prison.
11:28And they wanted to control that narrative.
11:30And I was remanded to the foster care system and orphaned.
11:32And during that time, over that six months of sort of almost isolation because I was
11:37one of the key witnesses against my father, I had to muster up the strength and courage
11:43that my mother had instilled in me to testify against my father for two days at his months
11:48long murder trial.
11:49And he is still incarcerated to this day.
11:51From an early age, I realized one thing, that none of this serves me at all if I don't
12:01make the best of this situation.
12:02It doesn't serve my mother's memory.
12:04It doesn't serve all the pain.
12:06And my mother is someone who taught me, and even my father to a certain extent, because
12:11he was a doctor.
12:12Now, granted, when you're a narcissist and a psychopath, you're doing those things because
12:16it's a reward system, it's all about them, right, which is something I had to come to
12:20terms with because I couldn't understand why my father could be a healer, is that I
12:23was taught from a very early age to be grateful for what I have in my life, to be grateful
12:27that I had a mother, a mommy and daddy that loved me, as my mother would say, and a roof
12:31over my head and food on the table and toys to play with.
12:34And that I need to appreciate that, that other kids are less fortunate than you are.
12:38And it is that spirit of generosity, that spirit of self-awareness, that spirit of just
12:46integrity that my mother instilled in me as a child is ultimately what led me through
12:51this.
12:52And, you know, when you're in foster care, it is a horrible situation.
12:56You're never comfortable.
12:57You don't know where you're going to live.
12:59You're always walking on eggshells.
13:01You know, you talk about trauma responses.
13:04You know, you have fight, flight, or fawning.
13:06I was fawning all the time because I didn't know if I said the wrong thing, which was threatened
13:11to me, by the way.
13:12I wouldn't get dinner or I wouldn't have a place to live.
13:14You know, these things are also horrific things that are thrown in a child's face in
13:19the worst possible moment of their life.
13:21This was certainly thrown my way.
13:23It's a really tough situation.
13:24But I was determined, even then, to not let this be something that defined.
13:29I knew that that would serve no purpose.
13:31It certainly doesn't bring my mother back.
13:33And it certainly doesn't honor her memory.
13:35Her death would be in vain.
13:36And I always told myself that.
13:38And granted, like, I'm a human being.
13:40I have definitely had my share of mistakes I have made throughout my young life.
13:43But at the same time, I am very aware of what I had to do to move on.
13:51And that was, that first step was to forgive my father.
13:55And I think a lot of people, you know, I talk to, like, if I'm doing, like, trauma coaching
14:00with someone or I'm talking about, you know, I'm sharing my story.
14:04That process can be really hard for people.
14:07Because a lot of people mistake forgiveness with acceptance, condemnation.
14:14And it's not that.
14:16You forgiving your someone or empowerment of the individual who has committed the offense
14:22against you.
14:23And that is something that's just not true.
14:25Because it's all about you.
14:27That's why I have to tell people is that, you know, you need to forgive that person for
14:30you, for you to move on.
14:31And I realized that at a very, very young age, that this is what I needed to do to move
14:36on because I did not want it to consume my life.
14:39And I think that's been the most unique part of when I share my story with people is they
14:43say to me, you're the outlier.
14:44You, for all intents and purposes, should be the guy under the bridge, muttering to themselves,
14:51shooting heroin, and no one would blame you.
14:54And for me, the story was not going to end that way.
14:57I decided, I went off to music school when I graduated high school.
15:01I was adopted finally when I was 13, about a year and change after all this happened.
15:05I moved into, I segued really hardcore into the arts when I was in high school and I ended
15:11up going to music school.
15:12After about two and a half years, I just wasn't feeling fulfilled and I dropped out because
15:17I wanted to get out of Ohio.
15:19I wanted to get away from everything.
15:21I wanted to get out of my small town because I wanted to make my own way in the world.
15:25I wanted to know, do people really like Collier for Collier?
15:28Or do people judge me for who, do they not like me for Collier?
15:33Do they have, I wanted a clean slate.
15:35I wanted to know that however your perception of me is based solely upon your immediate perception
15:39of me and not the narrative that I walk into the room with.
15:42And if you don't know what that narrative is, you can't judge me except for who I am.
15:46So I know that if you really like me, if you're a girl and we're having a wonderful
15:49relationship, you really like me for Collier.
15:51You don't like me because of what happened to me or you know the whole backstory or what
15:55you think you can get out of me, whatever that might be, right?
15:58And it's a really liberating thing.
16:00So I, $2,000 in my pocket, moved to Los Angeles and said, I'm going to go into the arts
16:05and
16:05I'm going to find a way, tell my story, honor my mother to heal myself and change one other
16:10person's life.
16:11And what ended up happening is I ended up changing a lot of people's lives and I still continue
16:16to do that work.
16:17I learned the craft of filmmaking and I made a film with a two-time Academy Award winner
16:21named Barbara Koppel.
16:22And we made a documentary called A Murder in Mansfield.
16:25And all of that was done in a lot of ways because one thing always plagued me throughout
16:31all of this.
16:32And I maintained a relationship with my father too over these years because I wanted to
16:38understand and I wanted to sort of to come to grips with the fact that why did you murder
16:42my mother?
16:44And, you know, I went as far as to make a film to try to find that out from him.
16:49And I realized that the answer that I was seeking wasn't the answer that I needed.
16:54It was you, what you think you need to move on.
16:58You don't really do because you already have.
17:00It's, you know, it's as cliche as it might sound.
17:03It is not about the finish line.
17:05It's about the journey.
17:06It's about the race.
17:07And then you get to that finish line and you realize that doesn't even matter.
17:10It was like, look at what I've done leading up in the work that I've put into myself and
17:15the life that I've cultivated and created.
17:18And that's what has ultimately been the biggest thing for me.
17:21And that's what I share with people.
17:23So I started a podcast called Moving Past Murder, which is my story of coming to grips
17:28with this and speaking to other people who are trauma survivors, whether it be in the
17:33true crime space or whatnot.
17:35I share letters from my father from prison to expose narcissism and psychopathy.
17:41I have people that are affected by what I'm doing in a positive way because they know they're
17:46not alone.
17:47And that's ultimately what I wanted to do.
17:49And that ultimately is what serves my mother and her memory.
17:52So I'm Callie O'Landry and this is my story.
17:55I hope that you guys draw some inspiration from it.
17:58And I hope that you guys are inspired.
18:02You can follow me on social media.
18:04It's at Callie O'Landry.
18:06All the links are below.
18:07So thank you for listening.
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