Before they entered the darkened house, Justin Doyle and his friends
checked to make sure it was empty. They knocked on the front door and
cased the exterior. Then they threw a rock through the window.
The three teens knew the owner of the house they planned to burglarize that night in 2008 was in the hospital. They had not anticipated that his friend was asleep inside. Awakened by the breaking glass and fearful for his life, the man grabbed a gun from a dresser drawer. When one of the teens opened the bedroom door, the man fired.
The youngest of the three intruders, a slight 14-year-old in a red hoodie named Travis Castle, was killed.
Doyle, then 15, was charged with murder in his friend’s death.
Doyle did not pull the trigger and was not even armed. But under a controversial Illinois law known as the felony murder rule, suspects can face murder charges if someone dies during the commission of certain felonies — even if the suspect in the underlying crime does not have a murder weapon or was not immediately present when the death occurred.
In Chicago and elsewhere, the law also has been used to charge crime suspects with murder when a fellow suspect is shot and killed by police.
The felony murder rule, particularly as applied to minors, has no shortage of critics. Some legal experts argue that, much like other sweeping changes in how juveniles are treated in the criminal courts, the law should be curtailed or eliminated.
“I think it’s ungodly harsh and unfair when it comes to juveniles,” said Herschella Conyers, law professor and co-director of the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “In my experience, they’re always amazed that they (were charged with murder). ‘But I didn’t shoot nobody’ is the steadfast answer.”
Speaking recently from inside a bare, beige room at Illinois River Correctional Center downstate, Doyle said Travis was like a little brother to him. The two, both country boys who knew their way around farms and dirt paths, came from modest means and longed for the things other kids had: expensive sneakers, nice bikes, feeling like they fit in.
Doyle, who already had some minor scrapes with the law, said a pair of older acquaintances had planned the burglary, assuring him and his friends that the house near Rockford was empty. If anyone answered the door, they decided, they would ask for “Ashley,” then quickly retreat.
No one was supposed to get hurt.
“We had no business being in that house,” said Doyle, now 23, who still regrets his decision.
“I’d rather trade places with (Travis),” he said. “I can say that honestly. I’ve felt so bad about it.”
———
Research on adolescent brains has shown that, compared to adults, juveniles are more impulsive, more prone to peer pressure and less able to comprehend the long-term consequences of their actions.
Such research has underpinned a dramatic shift in how juveniles are treated in the criminal justice system; a number of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions found that juveniles are fundamentally different from adults in culpability and rehabilitative potential.
In January, justices clarified the high court’s earlier decision that struck down mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles, ruling that it must be applied retroactively. The same day, President Barack Obama announced a ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons.
Marsha Levick, deputy director of Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, was a lawyer on the life-without-parole case. Doing away with the felony murder rule for minors is a top priority of the juvenile justice reform movement, she said.
“The time is now to re-examine applying this doctrine to kids,” Levick said. “When you have someone being charged and held accountable for the murder of someone who died at the hands of a third party, that’s felony murder in the extreme, but as applied to children, you can just multiply the absurdity.”
John Marshall Law School professor Timothy O’Neill noted that England, despite being the birthplace of the rule, eliminated it decades ago. He said there may be cases in which a murder charge is warranted when a person commits a crime that puts someone else in such peril that the person dies.
“My problem is that it’s a shortcut,” O’Neill said. “What this says is the fact that you were bad enough to commit a felony, you’re bad enough to be a murderer.”
While most states have adopted some form of the felony murder law, many have imposed limitations on how it can be applied, and a few have abolished it. As judges debate the merits of such laws, they continue to wrangle with issues of intent and whether setting in motion a chain of events that lead to a death is enough to result in a murder charge. Supreme courts in Massachusetts and Indiana tossed out two felony murder convictions last year.
University of Houston law professor David Crump, who generally supports the felony murder rule, said it acts as a deterrent and reaffirms the sanctity of human life. But he too believes that it should be applied only when certain factors are present, not just when a death occurs during an attempt or commission of a “forcible felony,” as the Illinois law states.
“The statutes should be written so that nobody would be convicted merely for being involved in the base crime, (but) only if they knew that the death of a human being was a likely event,” Crump said. “That’s the trouble with the Illinois statute. It doesn’t really define it well.”
Crump also believes the law should be applied only when an innocent bystander — not an accomplice — is killed during the commission of a crime.
The Indiana case, in which the defendants have become known as the “Elkhart Four,” bears a striking resemblance to Doyle’s. In 2012, a group of teens and young men entered a home intending to burglarize it but were unaware someone was asleep inside, according to court records. The man in the house woke up and shot and killed one of the intruders.
In overturning the murder convictions, the Indiana Supreme Court noted the defendants were unarmed and that their actions were not the immediate cause of their friend’s death. The defendants who appealed were ordered to be resentenced for burglary. One of the men, who was 17 at the time and had originally been sentenced to 50 years in prison, has already been released.
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law professor Steven Drizin, who has long argued that the felony murder law should not apply to juveniles, filed a “friend of the court” brief in the Elkhart Four case. In prison, Doyle spotted Drizin speaking about it on TV and reached out. Given the similarities of the two crimes — and that Doyle’s was in Drizin’s home state — the attorney agreed to take the case.
“Illinois’ felony murder rule is among the broadest in the nation. It is out of step with modern criminal and sentencing codes,” Drizin said. “The answer is not to charge someone who did not commit a murder with a murder and to punish them equally with those that do. The answer is to punish him more harshly for the crime he did commit.”
Drizin noted that juveniles who are charged with felony murder often end up pleading to lesser charges, as Doyle did. But being charged with murder as a juvenile, as Doyle was, can trigger an automatic transfer to adult court, where potential penalties are greater. Since Doyle’s conviction, Illinois lawmakers have banned automatic transfers to adult court for 15-year-olds, though older juveniles can still be transferred for certain serious offenses.
“It is not uncommon for defendants to plea to a charge to avoid the felony murder charge,” Drizin said. “They think, ‘I got to get out from underneath the possible 20- to 60-year sentence.’”
Another effect of taking a plea deal is that a defendant typically cannot appeal the case. For Doyle, that means his only hope for relief would be if Gov. Bruce Rauner grants him clemency. Drizin filed a clemency petition seeking a commutation of Doyle’s sentence last spring. A Rauner spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on the status of individual clemency petitions.
Another case in which the felony murder law was applied was that of Cedrick Chatman. The 17-year-old was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer after he jumped out of a car that had been stolen moments earlier in a robbery and beating in 2013. Chatman’s two friends were charged with murder in his death, though they were blocks away at the time of the shooting. They eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges of robbery and vehicular invasion.
Under pressure from the Chatman family’s attorneys and facing increasing fallout after the Laquan McDonald shooting, city officials released surveillance footage of the shooting in January.
Caroline Glennon, Cook County assistant public defender for one of the men, said she was not surprised at the initial felony-murder charge.
“I think it’s pretty standard practice in police-involved shootings,” Glennon said. “Unfortunately, we have a law that makes that legal.”
———
Doyle’s case never went to trial.
News of the slaying rocked the tiny, rural community of Stillman Valley, about 15 miles south of Rockford, and Doyle’s public defenders felt there was “an excellent chance” of a jury finding him guilty of murder, court records show. Doyle agreed to plead guilty to home invasion and involuntary manslaughter, and in exchange the murder and residential burglary charges were dropped. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison and is expected to serve half of that.
Eric Morrow, one of Doyle’s public defenders, said the plea deal was the best option for Doyle, who was the last of the suspects to turn himself in to police.
“It was a tough case, a case you lose sleep over,” said Morrow, now Ogle County state’s attorney. “You see the possibility of a young man wasting the good part of his life.”
On the night in question, Cody Moore, then 18, drove the three younger teens to the house along with Anthony Shelby, who was 19. Moore knew the homeowner was in the hospital because of a motorcycle crash. Moore also knew where the homeowner kept a collection of guns the teens were supposed to steal, records show.
The third person who entered the house with Doyle and Travis was Nathan Whitmire, then 16.
Reached by phone, Whitmire said the trio were following orders from the older two.
“We were peer-pressured by people who didn’t (care) about us,” said Whitmire, who received a shorter sentence on a charge of residential burglary and was released from prison in 2013. “What we didn’t know is they wanted to use us. They sent us kids in there to do their work.”
Moore and Shelby, who was the first to speak to police and was not charged, deny being the masterminds of the burglary.
“I know how it looks. It looks like because they’re younger and we were older, it was peer pressure, but it wasn’t,” Shelby told the Chicago Tribune. “Everybody is responsible for their own actions. I thought about going in, but I chose not to. I had a bad feeling.”
Moore, who also was charged with murder, accepted a plea deal identical to Doyle’s. In a letter from prison, he wrote of the younger teens involved: “They made their own choices. I don’t know why (Shelby and I) never went in the house.”
He added, “The law is unfair, and with the felony-murder rule, (you’re) getting the same amount of time that you would get if you just point-blank shot and killed a person.”
Everyone involved said they have struggled with Travis’ death. The houseguest who fatally shot Travis that night told the Tribune he did so in self-defense. He was not charged but said he’s been haunted by the whole experience.
“I went through thousands and thousands of dollars of counseling to try and forget,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his family’s safety. “I feel very bad. I feel it’s a very unfortunate situation that should never have happened.”
———
A faded picture of a 2-year-old Doyle with his older siblings hangs on the pale dining room wall of his mother’s home in Rockford.
“I was harder on them than I was on him,” Patty Smith said. “I didn’t expect enough from him. I was a single mom raising four kids. He wasn’t a bad kid. He wasn’t disrespectful. But I look back now and I see that he was confused. He needed more guidance.”
Doyle’s parents split when he was 3. The death of his beloved grandfather when Doyle was 10 seemed to mark the beginning of his troubles. He stole a wrench and bike tire tube to fix a flat when he was 12, court records show. Two years later he was picked up for possession of marijuana, then possession of a stolen snowmobile and property damage. Failing grades got him kicked off the high school basketball team.
The more he hung out with an older crowd, the more problems seemed to follow, but he carried on, he said, because it meant money in his pocket and a sense that he belonged.
“That’s what changed me,” Doyle said. “I was trying to fit in to be something I’m not.”
After the botched burglary attempt, Doyle’s mother saw the panic and confusion in her son’s eyes when she explained the murder charges.
“He just looked at me and said, ‘I didn’t kill him,’” Smith recalled. “I still can’t understand how you give a 15-year-old 30 years at 50 percent. That’s as long as he’s been in this world.”
She said she has seen her son mature in the past eight years, though it’s difficult at times not to see him as the child he was when he was sent to prison. He still signs his name in a simple cursive script. He still asks for his mother’s chipped beef and gravy.
Since he’s been locked up, Doyle has obtained his GED and is close to earning an associate degree. His mother keeps the construction certificate he earned in prison on display on a corner bookshelf at home.
“Justin has changed a lot,” she said before breaking down in quiet sobs. “He’s done his time. He feels bad about what happened with Travis. But it’s time for him to come home. He needs to be out and free so he can be a productive citizen. As a mom, I just want my baby home.”
Some of Travis’ family members agree.
The last time Chelsea Castle saw her brother was when he and Doyle disappeared down the street on their bikes.
“I don’t hold (Doyle) accountable at all. He always looked out for (Travis),” said Castle, who had dated Doyle before her brother’s death. “I know Justin is sorry, and he thinks about it every day.”
The position has put her at odds with others in her family, foremost her father.
“All I know is the anger I have inside of me,” Clyde “Pete” Castle said. “I’m mad at everybody. I’m angry back at the school system. My poor son. I’ll be angry until I die.”
At first, anger ate away at Travis’ mother, Kim Britton, said her sister Linda Barker. She recalled that her sister, in her grief over her son’s death, would step out onto her porch in the middle of the night and call out his name.
A letter and hand-drawn picture from Doyle in prison softened Britton’s heart, her sister said. Britton framed the picture depicting praying hands with the words “Gone But Never Forgotten Travis Castle” and hung it on her wall, where her family said it remains. Doyle had a similar image tattooed on his arm.
“She said to us once, ‘If this had been the other way around, if it would have been Patty’s boy lost, I would not want Travis to serve 30 years in prison,’” Barker said. “She said, ‘He didn’t do this to Travis. He was just naive.’ None of them thought anything like this would have happened.”
Compounding the heartache for Travis’ family, his mother died two years ago from cancer.
Chelsea Castle and Barker wrote statements supporting Doyle’s clemency and traveled to Chicago to attend his clemency hearing.
Every year on the anniversary of Travis’ death, the family releases balloons into the blue sky. Twenty days later, they celebrate his birthday with cake.
“It never gets easier,” Barker said. “But (Doyle) still writes us. He still asks us for forgiveness. I think he needs to forgive himself. We have already forgiven him.”
The three teens knew the owner of the house they planned to burglarize that night in 2008 was in the hospital. They had not anticipated that his friend was asleep inside. Awakened by the breaking glass and fearful for his life, the man grabbed a gun from a dresser drawer. When one of the teens opened the bedroom door, the man fired.
The youngest of the three intruders, a slight 14-year-old in a red hoodie named Travis Castle, was killed.
Doyle, then 15, was charged with murder in his friend’s death.
Doyle did not pull the trigger and was not even armed. But under a controversial Illinois law known as the felony murder rule, suspects can face murder charges if someone dies during the commission of certain felonies — even if the suspect in the underlying crime does not have a murder weapon or was not immediately present when the death occurred.
In Chicago and elsewhere, the law also has been used to charge crime suspects with murder when a fellow suspect is shot and killed by police.
The felony murder rule, particularly as applied to minors, has no shortage of critics. Some legal experts argue that, much like other sweeping changes in how juveniles are treated in the criminal courts, the law should be curtailed or eliminated.
“I think it’s ungodly harsh and unfair when it comes to juveniles,” said Herschella Conyers, law professor and co-director of the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “In my experience, they’re always amazed that they (were charged with murder). ‘But I didn’t shoot nobody’ is the steadfast answer.”
Speaking recently from inside a bare, beige room at Illinois River Correctional Center downstate, Doyle said Travis was like a little brother to him. The two, both country boys who knew their way around farms and dirt paths, came from modest means and longed for the things other kids had: expensive sneakers, nice bikes, feeling like they fit in.
Doyle, who already had some minor scrapes with the law, said a pair of older acquaintances had planned the burglary, assuring him and his friends that the house near Rockford was empty. If anyone answered the door, they decided, they would ask for “Ashley,” then quickly retreat.
No one was supposed to get hurt.
“We had no business being in that house,” said Doyle, now 23, who still regrets his decision.
“I’d rather trade places with (Travis),” he said. “I can say that honestly. I’ve felt so bad about it.”
———
Research on adolescent brains has shown that, compared to adults, juveniles are more impulsive, more prone to peer pressure and less able to comprehend the long-term consequences of their actions.
Such research has underpinned a dramatic shift in how juveniles are treated in the criminal justice system; a number of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions found that juveniles are fundamentally different from adults in culpability and rehabilitative potential.
In January, justices clarified the high court’s earlier decision that struck down mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles, ruling that it must be applied retroactively. The same day, President Barack Obama announced a ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons.
Marsha Levick, deputy director of Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, was a lawyer on the life-without-parole case. Doing away with the felony murder rule for minors is a top priority of the juvenile justice reform movement, she said.
“The time is now to re-examine applying this doctrine to kids,” Levick said. “When you have someone being charged and held accountable for the murder of someone who died at the hands of a third party, that’s felony murder in the extreme, but as applied to children, you can just multiply the absurdity.”
John Marshall Law School professor Timothy O’Neill noted that England, despite being the birthplace of the rule, eliminated it decades ago. He said there may be cases in which a murder charge is warranted when a person commits a crime that puts someone else in such peril that the person dies.
“My problem is that it’s a shortcut,” O’Neill said. “What this says is the fact that you were bad enough to commit a felony, you’re bad enough to be a murderer.”
While most states have adopted some form of the felony murder law, many have imposed limitations on how it can be applied, and a few have abolished it. As judges debate the merits of such laws, they continue to wrangle with issues of intent and whether setting in motion a chain of events that lead to a death is enough to result in a murder charge. Supreme courts in Massachusetts and Indiana tossed out two felony murder convictions last year.
University of Houston law professor David Crump, who generally supports the felony murder rule, said it acts as a deterrent and reaffirms the sanctity of human life. But he too believes that it should be applied only when certain factors are present, not just when a death occurs during an attempt or commission of a “forcible felony,” as the Illinois law states.
“The statutes should be written so that nobody would be convicted merely for being involved in the base crime, (but) only if they knew that the death of a human being was a likely event,” Crump said. “That’s the trouble with the Illinois statute. It doesn’t really define it well.”
Crump also believes the law should be applied only when an innocent bystander — not an accomplice — is killed during the commission of a crime.
The Indiana case, in which the defendants have become known as the “Elkhart Four,” bears a striking resemblance to Doyle’s. In 2012, a group of teens and young men entered a home intending to burglarize it but were unaware someone was asleep inside, according to court records. The man in the house woke up and shot and killed one of the intruders.
In overturning the murder convictions, the Indiana Supreme Court noted the defendants were unarmed and that their actions were not the immediate cause of their friend’s death. The defendants who appealed were ordered to be resentenced for burglary. One of the men, who was 17 at the time and had originally been sentenced to 50 years in prison, has already been released.
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law professor Steven Drizin, who has long argued that the felony murder law should not apply to juveniles, filed a “friend of the court” brief in the Elkhart Four case. In prison, Doyle spotted Drizin speaking about it on TV and reached out. Given the similarities of the two crimes — and that Doyle’s was in Drizin’s home state — the attorney agreed to take the case.
“Illinois’ felony murder rule is among the broadest in the nation. It is out of step with modern criminal and sentencing codes,” Drizin said. “The answer is not to charge someone who did not commit a murder with a murder and to punish them equally with those that do. The answer is to punish him more harshly for the crime he did commit.”
Drizin noted that juveniles who are charged with felony murder often end up pleading to lesser charges, as Doyle did. But being charged with murder as a juvenile, as Doyle was, can trigger an automatic transfer to adult court, where potential penalties are greater. Since Doyle’s conviction, Illinois lawmakers have banned automatic transfers to adult court for 15-year-olds, though older juveniles can still be transferred for certain serious offenses.
“It is not uncommon for defendants to plea to a charge to avoid the felony murder charge,” Drizin said. “They think, ‘I got to get out from underneath the possible 20- to 60-year sentence.’”
Another effect of taking a plea deal is that a defendant typically cannot appeal the case. For Doyle, that means his only hope for relief would be if Gov. Bruce Rauner grants him clemency. Drizin filed a clemency petition seeking a commutation of Doyle’s sentence last spring. A Rauner spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on the status of individual clemency petitions.
Another case in which the felony murder law was applied was that of Cedrick Chatman. The 17-year-old was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer after he jumped out of a car that had been stolen moments earlier in a robbery and beating in 2013. Chatman’s two friends were charged with murder in his death, though they were blocks away at the time of the shooting. They eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges of robbery and vehicular invasion.
Under pressure from the Chatman family’s attorneys and facing increasing fallout after the Laquan McDonald shooting, city officials released surveillance footage of the shooting in January.
Caroline Glennon, Cook County assistant public defender for one of the men, said she was not surprised at the initial felony-murder charge.
“I think it’s pretty standard practice in police-involved shootings,” Glennon said. “Unfortunately, we have a law that makes that legal.”
———
Doyle’s case never went to trial.
News of the slaying rocked the tiny, rural community of Stillman Valley, about 15 miles south of Rockford, and Doyle’s public defenders felt there was “an excellent chance” of a jury finding him guilty of murder, court records show. Doyle agreed to plead guilty to home invasion and involuntary manslaughter, and in exchange the murder and residential burglary charges were dropped. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison and is expected to serve half of that.
Eric Morrow, one of Doyle’s public defenders, said the plea deal was the best option for Doyle, who was the last of the suspects to turn himself in to police.
“It was a tough case, a case you lose sleep over,” said Morrow, now Ogle County state’s attorney. “You see the possibility of a young man wasting the good part of his life.”
On the night in question, Cody Moore, then 18, drove the three younger teens to the house along with Anthony Shelby, who was 19. Moore knew the homeowner was in the hospital because of a motorcycle crash. Moore also knew where the homeowner kept a collection of guns the teens were supposed to steal, records show.
The third person who entered the house with Doyle and Travis was Nathan Whitmire, then 16.
Reached by phone, Whitmire said the trio were following orders from the older two.
“We were peer-pressured by people who didn’t (care) about us,” said Whitmire, who received a shorter sentence on a charge of residential burglary and was released from prison in 2013. “What we didn’t know is they wanted to use us. They sent us kids in there to do their work.”
Moore and Shelby, who was the first to speak to police and was not charged, deny being the masterminds of the burglary.
“I know how it looks. It looks like because they’re younger and we were older, it was peer pressure, but it wasn’t,” Shelby told the Chicago Tribune. “Everybody is responsible for their own actions. I thought about going in, but I chose not to. I had a bad feeling.”
Moore, who also was charged with murder, accepted a plea deal identical to Doyle’s. In a letter from prison, he wrote of the younger teens involved: “They made their own choices. I don’t know why (Shelby and I) never went in the house.”
He added, “The law is unfair, and with the felony-murder rule, (you’re) getting the same amount of time that you would get if you just point-blank shot and killed a person.”
Everyone involved said they have struggled with Travis’ death. The houseguest who fatally shot Travis that night told the Tribune he did so in self-defense. He was not charged but said he’s been haunted by the whole experience.
“I went through thousands and thousands of dollars of counseling to try and forget,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his family’s safety. “I feel very bad. I feel it’s a very unfortunate situation that should never have happened.”
———
A faded picture of a 2-year-old Doyle with his older siblings hangs on the pale dining room wall of his mother’s home in Rockford.
“I was harder on them than I was on him,” Patty Smith said. “I didn’t expect enough from him. I was a single mom raising four kids. He wasn’t a bad kid. He wasn’t disrespectful. But I look back now and I see that he was confused. He needed more guidance.”
Doyle’s parents split when he was 3. The death of his beloved grandfather when Doyle was 10 seemed to mark the beginning of his troubles. He stole a wrench and bike tire tube to fix a flat when he was 12, court records show. Two years later he was picked up for possession of marijuana, then possession of a stolen snowmobile and property damage. Failing grades got him kicked off the high school basketball team.
The more he hung out with an older crowd, the more problems seemed to follow, but he carried on, he said, because it meant money in his pocket and a sense that he belonged.
“That’s what changed me,” Doyle said. “I was trying to fit in to be something I’m not.”
After the botched burglary attempt, Doyle’s mother saw the panic and confusion in her son’s eyes when she explained the murder charges.
“He just looked at me and said, ‘I didn’t kill him,’” Smith recalled. “I still can’t understand how you give a 15-year-old 30 years at 50 percent. That’s as long as he’s been in this world.”
She said she has seen her son mature in the past eight years, though it’s difficult at times not to see him as the child he was when he was sent to prison. He still signs his name in a simple cursive script. He still asks for his mother’s chipped beef and gravy.
Since he’s been locked up, Doyle has obtained his GED and is close to earning an associate degree. His mother keeps the construction certificate he earned in prison on display on a corner bookshelf at home.
“Justin has changed a lot,” she said before breaking down in quiet sobs. “He’s done his time. He feels bad about what happened with Travis. But it’s time for him to come home. He needs to be out and free so he can be a productive citizen. As a mom, I just want my baby home.”
Some of Travis’ family members agree.
The last time Chelsea Castle saw her brother was when he and Doyle disappeared down the street on their bikes.
“I don’t hold (Doyle) accountable at all. He always looked out for (Travis),” said Castle, who had dated Doyle before her brother’s death. “I know Justin is sorry, and he thinks about it every day.”
The position has put her at odds with others in her family, foremost her father.
“All I know is the anger I have inside of me,” Clyde “Pete” Castle said. “I’m mad at everybody. I’m angry back at the school system. My poor son. I’ll be angry until I die.”
At first, anger ate away at Travis’ mother, Kim Britton, said her sister Linda Barker. She recalled that her sister, in her grief over her son’s death, would step out onto her porch in the middle of the night and call out his name.
A letter and hand-drawn picture from Doyle in prison softened Britton’s heart, her sister said. Britton framed the picture depicting praying hands with the words “Gone But Never Forgotten Travis Castle” and hung it on her wall, where her family said it remains. Doyle had a similar image tattooed on his arm.
“She said to us once, ‘If this had been the other way around, if it would have been Patty’s boy lost, I would not want Travis to serve 30 years in prison,’” Barker said. “She said, ‘He didn’t do this to Travis. He was just naive.’ None of them thought anything like this would have happened.”
Compounding the heartache for Travis’ family, his mother died two years ago from cancer.
Chelsea Castle and Barker wrote statements supporting Doyle’s clemency and traveled to Chicago to attend his clemency hearing.
Every year on the anniversary of Travis’ death, the family releases balloons into the blue sky. Twenty days later, they celebrate his birthday with cake.
“It never gets easier,” Barker said. “But (Doyle) still writes us. He still asks us for forgiveness. I think he needs to forgive himself. We have already forgiven him.”
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