Randal 'Suffocated Himself', Father Says
'I have nothing to hide,' Dooley told police in interview
By Shannon Kari
Originally published in the National Post, February 8, 2002
TORONTO — Randal Dooley's father suggested to police during a lengthy videotaped interview that his misbehaving seven-year-old son might have taken his own life by burying his face in a pillow on his bunk bed.
"I think honestly, I think my son never wanted to … my son just deliberately suffocated himself. That's my belief," Tony Dooley said when asked about the cause of Randal's death.
Pressed again by police, the boy's father said the only other possible cause of death he could think of was heart failure.
Tony Dooley, 36, and Marcia Dooley, 32, the boy's stepmother, are on trial on charges of second-degree murder.
The police interview, played in court yesterday, was taped at a Toronto police office on Sept. 25, 1998, several hours after Randal's battered body was discovered.
An autopsy later determined that the boy had suffered 14 fractured ribs, a lacerated liver and four separate brain injuries. Autopsy photos displayed in court show Randal's body covered with bruises and welts.
Throughout the trial, Tony and Marcia Dooley have sat silently, next to their lawyers, usually with their heads down.
The videotape displayed a more animated Tony Dooley, who became increasingly talkative during the nearly two-hour interview.
Detective Greg McLane told Mr. Dooley that he had the right to a lawyer and could leave the room at any time, "but the passing of a seven-year-old causes us to want to look into the circumstances of what happened."
"I'm here. I have nothing to hide," said Mr. Dooley.
The father admitted he beat the boy with a belt about a month before his death, leaving marks on his backside.
"That was the only time I actually struck him, I usually talked to him," Mr. Dooley insisted.
He said Randal and Randal's older brother, Teego, had also been beaten by their aunt in Jamaica, where they lived before coming to join their father and Marcia Dooley in November, 1997.
"Sometimes a lick is the only thing that straightens you out," Mr. Dooley said. In an apparent misstatement, he explained that Jamaican culture permits "capital punishment" to discipline children.
The jury has heard a number of witnesses testify that Marcia Dooley regularly abused Randal, broke his arm on one occasion and would make the boy eat his vomit.
During the police interview, Mr. Dooley said he had never seen his wife "strap" the boy and said the broken arm was caused by a "slip on the ice."
Randal's father suggested that the boy forced himself to vomit and defecate in the bathtub because he didn't like his stepmother and was jealous of his five-month-old brother, Tyreek.
The evening before Randal's body was discovered, Mr. Dooley said he was downstairs when he heard that the boy had fallen from the bunk bed.
At one point in the interview, he said he told his wife that night: "Marcia, this young man is going to get us in trouble, leave him alone."
"Why would that be in your mind?" said Det. McLane.
Mr. Dooley said it was because he believed Randal to be accident prone.
Near the end of the interview, Mr. Dooley said he had always done his best to make his sons "happy and comfortable."
"I'm sure if something happened, you guys will get to the bottom of it," Mr. Dooley told Det. McLane and another detective.
"Oh, it's going to happen. It's inevitable," Det. McLane replied, which resulted in laughter from some members of the jury.
Earlier in the day, Justice Eugene Ewaschuk instructed the jury that the videotaped interview can only be used as evidence with respect to Mr. Dooley and is not admissible "for or against" Marcia Dooley.
