David Strittmatter, left, and younger brother Charlie, killed in 1987 by Wayne Doyle.

Family Photo 1982 via beaconjournal.com

When the Akron Beacon Journal published on Sunday a lengthy story concerning the possible parole of child-killer Wayne Doyle, relief swept over me. Not relief that parole had been blocked again, as it has been time and time again since Doyle was sent to prison for murdering 7-year-old Charlie Wright in 1987. A jury convicted Doyle of involuntary manslaughter, felonious assault, and child (you think?) endangering. Those terms are pathetic euphemisms—legalese, if you will—for what Doyle did Charlie.

I did not know Charlie personally, but I came love him because, in a very real sense, I spoke for him then and still do every chance I get. That is a helluva lot more than Doyle, the man who was supposed to be the male figure in Charlie’s life, did. Doyle was the live-in boyfriend of Charlie’s mother. I was one of an army of reporters and writers who wrote about Charlie at the time of his death and just another voice of an outraged community. Passion coursed through the heart and soul of Akron. It burned like a wildfire and would have consumed anyone in its path if Michael Callahan, assistant Summit County prosecutor, had not lent his considerable talents to assuring that Doyle paid for beating Charlie until his intestine ruptured, poisoned, and killed Charlie.

Callahan understood the responsibility that had been thrust on him. He faced it head on and convinced the jury that Doyle was guilty—aided by the image of the angelic Charlie, Callahan beat Doyle into the fiery, repulsive figure of the evil he was and forged a powerful path to a verdict—and deserved the sentence of 15-to-40 years in prison he received. I wrote then, wrote again when reviewing Callahan’s career in my book The Indomitable Don Plusquellic (Callahan ran for mayor against Plusquellic and was defeated), and yet again in the recently published Akron’s Daily Miracle.

I presented a couple of ideas for the essay I would write for the book that takes readers inside what once was one of the great medium-sized newspapers in America (please remember the late John S. Knight for the resources he provided compared to today). The book’s inspiration and editors, Stuart Warner and Deb Van Tassel Warner, wanted me to reprise Charlie Wright’s story. But this time there was a twist. It will always be Charlie’s story, every terrible moment that happened to this little boy who brought a community together to stand with and behind Charlie and against Wayne Doyle, and to a lesser extent his mother Lorretta Wright, who also served time, more for not protecting Charlie than for anything she did to the son she loved but did not seem to understand how to prioritize and defend. She is long released from prison. Is Doyle now next?

As Beacon Journal reporter Stephanie Warsmith, a veteran who knows the insides and out of the justice system, reported, an Ohio Parole Board panel unanimously recommended in October that Doyle be released. The entire board will hold an online hearing on Wednesday (February 17). As before, there is an effort to reverse the decision. Charlie’s brother David Strittmatter, a year older, had originally intended to stand back and let the Parole Board make its decision without weighing in as he has in the past. David was adopted by Shirley and Tom Strittmatter, who had been foster parents to both boys. I knew Shirley from my reporting and writing. She died two years ago, but she was the soul of kindness and understanding and Charlie’s sunshine and warmth and David’s salvation through some turbulent years. David’s original ambivalence about what should happen regarding Doyle’s parole comes, I think, from the goodness and forgiveness he and Charlie learned at Shirley’s side.

David, 42, has since, and I think rightly, decided to oppose Doyle’s parole despite the fact the wants to forgive the man “with every part of me.” People do deserve second chances. While I understand the feeling and admire David for it, I do not share it in this case. What Doyle did, ended Charlie’s life. He gave him no second chance. So I oppose, in the strongest possible way, Doyle’s release before the end of his original sentence in 2027. I come at this issue with some hard and painfully won knowledge.

In 1983, Dan and Jane Osborne and their son, Ben, were murdered in their Fort Wayne, Indiana, home by an intruder, and their then 2-year-old daughter Caroline left to wonder a house relatively new to her. The Osbornes had moved from Kansas City, where Dan had been on the business staff of the Kansas City Star, in order for Dan to become editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Sentinel, a Knight-Ridder newspaper at the time. The deaths devastated my wife Jackie and me. The Osbornes had been and remained our closest friends since Jackie and I and Dan worked together at the Tulsa Tribune. Time may have passed but the memories of and love for the Osbornes never, ever will.

It is the reason that when I was a chief editorial writer and a weekly columnist on the Beacon Journal editorial page, I recused myself and suggested others in similar situations do so from making judgments about the fates of killers in cases in which a person is emotionally involved. As I wrote then, I would have myself killed the man who murdered the Osborne family with the very baseball bat he used, if given the chance. As you might surmise, I have not changed my mind. Yet, as a principle, I do not believe in the death penalty, because, in the end, it makes us (the state) as bad as the killer.

If Wayne Doyle has indeed changed during his years in prison, his second chance on the outside should begin when he has served his full term—and not one day less. I wish the Parole Board Panel had asked me and others who did the reporting and writing about Charlie Wright’s death for our opinion. We are not family. We were taught to strive for the difficult goal of objectivity. I know I fail. I cannot and will not forgive Wayne Doyle for taking Charlie’s life and future away from him. I do not have it in me. I have spoken for Charlie Wright for too many years and I will speak for him with my last, dying breath.

No. No. No. A thousand, a million times no . . . parole.