Marcia Dooley beat her stepson to death in the worst case of child abuse Canadian courts have seen. Now she's free on day parole.
torontosun.com
Michele Mandel
Published Dec 14, 2022
''I can still see the purple bruises on his closed eyes that defied the undertaker’s best efforts at camouflage. I can still see the gruesome morgue photos that were shown at the trial of his father and stepmother: his body a battered map of previous hell, the scars of his sad, short life carved into every centimetre of his tender skin.
He was just seven years old, and from the moment that poor Jamaican boy landed on Canadian soil in November 1997 with the promise of a better life, Randy was beaten and tormented, ridiculed and starved, until he was dead.''
“This may be the worst case of child abuse in Canadian penal history,” Justice Eugene Ewaschuk would say.
Both his father, Edward “Tony” Dooley and his stepmom Marcia Dooley were convicted of second-degree murder. But it was Marcia, who the judge called the “prototype of the cruel, vengeful stepmother,” who was held responsible for most of the abuse suffered by Randal, including the fatal blow.''
The last night of his life is still seared on my heart. His eight-year-old brother Tego testified Randy fell on his way up to the top bunk after another beating from their stepmom. Marcia dumped the unconscious boy in a bathtub of ice-cold water to revive him, but then left him alone on the advice of her husband.
Tego pulled him out, dressed him in dry pyjamas and tucked him into his bed. He then lay down beside him and fell asleep.
In the morning, his little brother was dead.''
