This week a community rose again in a chorus of remembrance and outrage to stand with Charlie Wright, the 7-year-old boy killed in 1987 by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Its letters, emails, Facebook posts, petition, and unwavering voice resulted in the Ohio Parole Board coming to a different conclusion from its a six-member panel that had recommended unanimously, after five denials, that Wayne Doyle be released.
David Strittmatter, Charlie’s older brother by a year, opposed the release, again overcoming his own pain, as he did when Doyle was tried, to speak against Doyle. Like Charlie, David had been beaten by Doyle. He had done all he could to protect his little brother from the man whose blows ruptured Charlie’s intestine, poisoning him.
Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh’s office appealed the recommendation, and Brad Gessner, Bevan’s chief counsel, told the Parole Board that the community’s response was similar to what it had been 34 years before. More than 800 had shared a Facebook post from the prosecutor’s office concerning the possible parole, and nearly 900 had signed a petition opposing Doyle’s release from a 15-to-40-year sentence that was posted on the website of Block Parole, Inc., a Columbus-based nonprofit.
Brent Vinocur, head of Block Parole, told the Akron Beacon Journal that Doyle is among the worst offenders who should serve the maximum sentence. “This guy brutally murdered this little boy,” Vinocur told reporter Stephanie Warsmith. “He should serve every day.”
And yet, a parole board panel voted 6-0 to recommend Doyle’s release. The recommendation came from people who are appointed by the Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction (ODRC). Since 2019 that has been Annette M. Chambers-Smith, who rose through the ranks after joining the department in 1993. Ohio Parole Board members “must be qualified by education or experience in correctional work, including law enforcement, prosecution of offenses, advocating for the rights of victims of crime, probation or parole, in law, in social work, or in a combination of the three categories.” In other words, these people know their stuff.
They also serve with at least one member “who is a victim of crime, a member of a victim’s family, or who represents an organization that advocates for the rights of victims of crime.” Whether it was that person or the appearance of David Strittmatter or the sheer collective voice of the larger Akron community, the full board came to the opposite decision. It voted 6-4 to deny Doyle’s release and will make him serve his full 40 years.
The vote might reflect the inherent conflict between the dual responsibilities of Parole Board—rehabilitation and correction. Or, maybe, the vote is merely another symptom of an age when achieving anything close to unanimity on right and wrong or even indisputable fact is downright Sisyphean.
In any case, when I consider the binary that is the ODRC, I think not of rehabilitation and corrections but rather rehabilitation and punishment. Rehabilitation is a good and worthy goal, and even people who do bad things should be able to earn a second chance. But what of a man like Wayne Doyle? Is he a person who just did a bad thing, who did not even mean to allow a bad temper to get the better of him and turn him into the child killer? Or, is he someone found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, felonious assault, and child endangering which are, as I suggested in a previous post, simply “pathetic euphemisms . . . for what Doyle did to Charlie.” That is, murder him.
I think the answer lies in a scenario I discovered 34 years ago when I first wrote about Charlie and came to love this boy I never met. For me the most damning evidence of Doyle’s intentions toward the boys for whom he should have served as a father figure may not have been the most violent and damaging, the beatings, steel-toed-boot kickings, and other overt violence that contributed to the more than 30 bruises medical experts found on Charlie when they examined the first-grader’s body. As Lt. Ed Duvall Jr., commander of the Akron Police Department’s Juvenile Unit, listened to David describe what Charlie and he had endured, he “felt tears” rolling down his cheeks.
When Doyle put the boys “on punishment,” he would pile two or three thick telephone books on the backs of their hands, arms extended. Weaken after a time and drop one, and Doyle had just what he wanted: The reason and opportunity to rain terror upon the boys. I do not know if Wayne Doyle is an evil man now, but I know he was when he killed Charlie and beat David again and again when he tried to stand between Doyle and Charlie. Does that sound like involuntary anything? Or, does it sound like premeditation—an element or murder?
Whatever delivered the full Parole Board to its majority decision, I am grateful it got there, and that 34 years later it could still recognize and respect the violence done to little Charlie and the brave brother who stood up for him then and again this week. Because the board came to that decision, Doyle’s punishment will continue until 2027 and he will call the Allen Correctional Institution in Lima what I hope is home painful home. (That is why I chose the illustrative photo above this essay.)
Maybe with the extra time Wayne Doyle might consider investing in some of it in the prison programming intended to rehabilitate inmates. According to the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office, Doyle, 68, has not taken advantage of this opportunity for 11 years.
And still, he sought parole (of course) and was recommended for it by the initial panel. Then, a community that refuses to forget Charlie Wright weighed in, a community that has not forgotten Charlie or children like him, and, I hope, never will.
