MANDEL: How is this 'cruel, vengeful stepmother' free?

There are some victims I can never forget.

Almost 25 years have passed since I forced myself to peer into the small, open coffin that held the battered body of little Randal Dooley —  burned in my memory is the sight of his emaciated frame on the white satin, so wasted from abuse and neglect that his dark tuxedo hung like clothes on a scarecrow.

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 prosecutor had asked for 25 years before Marica was eligible for parole from her life sentence; the judge gave her 18. At the time, it seemed doubtful that any parole board would release her.

But now she’s free.

The news was published Tuesday — and it landed like a sucker punch. Marcia Dooley, 52, has been granted day parole for six months following an “in-office review.” The child killer didn’t even have to appear at a hearing to plead her case.

She is to stay away from her ex-husband and Randal’s family, she’s to attend counselling and not care for children. According to the board, she’s taken anger management and empathy classes and poses a low risk to society.

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Dooley has only just finished her first-ever unescorted temporary absence — a 60-day pass was granted in September for “personal development and rehabilitation” — and yet the board feels she’s now ready for a halfway house.

Even after she was convicted, she refused to take responsibility, trying to appeal her conviction all the way to the Supreme Court. “In fact, early in your sentence,” the board notes in its decision, “you justified your actions, suggesting that violence is a way of life in your culture.”

It doesn’t sound like she’s progressed much: “In your previous hearings before the Board, your accountability for the abuse and death of the victim has been strained,” the panel wrote. According to her

Randal’s 3-foot, 10-inch body was covered with “hundreds” of bruises, cuts and welts. Only his scalp, the palms of his hands and soles of his feet were spared from the vicious beatings.

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Randal Dooley was the victim of what a judge described as some of the worst child abuse in Canadian penal history. TORONTO SUN FILES

He had pneumonia. He weighed just 41 pounds. When he vomited from her beatings, she forced him to eat it.

A missing tooth was found in his stomach. His ribs and elbow had been broken, his liver lacerated, a vertebra fractured. He suffered four separate injuries to his brain, the last of which ultimately killed him on Sept. 25, 1998.

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.

Throughout her 2002 trial, where those horrific autopsy photos were shown, his killer never shed a tear. At her 2020 hearing, where she was first denied day parole, Marcia wept and said she was “ashamed” — but she’d forgiven herself.

Well, that’s one person who has.

mmandel@postmedia.com