Laura Ann Doyle, one of two women convicted of the 1985 murder of 17-year-old Michele “Missy” Avila, was released on parole on December 10, 2012, after serving 22 years in prison. A California prison spokesman said at the time that she was paroled to a location “somewhere in Southern California,” but the specific city was not disclosed. She has not surfaced in any public reporting since.1Daily News. Last Woman Convicted in Missy Avila Murder Released From Prison
Where Laura Ann Doyle Is Today
Doyle was 45 when she walked out of Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla. Prosecutors had opposed her release, calling the killing a “deliberate, well-planned torture and execution,” but the parole board cleared her after years of denials.1Daily News. Last Woman Convicted in Missy Avila Murder Released From Prison
Since then, she has stayed out of the public eye. No news coverage, legal filings, or public controversy involving her has been reported since her release. Her co-defendant Karen Severson, paroled a year earlier in December 2011, drew fresh attention by publishing memoirs about the case; Doyle did not. Whatever life she has built has been a private one.
The Crime She Was Convicted Of
On October 1, 1985, Doyle and Severson drove Missy Avila, a 17-year-old friend, to a remote spot in Big Tujunga Canyon inside the Angeles National Forest. They confronted her over alleged relationships with their boyfriends, shoved her into a shallow mountain creek, and held her face underwater until she drowned. A log weighing roughly 100 pounds was placed on top of her body. When hikers found her days later, her face was battered, her hair had been hacked off with a knife, and her hoop earrings had been ripped from her ears.2ABC7. Family Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Convicted Killer
The case sat unsolved for nearly three years. During that time, Severson moved into the Avila family home and pretended to help search for the killer, and Doyle sent a sympathy card and twenty dollars to Missy’s mother, Irene Avila. A break came in 1988 when a teenager who had been in the car that day told sheriff’s investigators that Doyle had admitted, “We killed Missy.”1Daily News. Last Woman Convicted in Missy Avila Murder Released From Prison
Doyle and Severson were tried together in Pasadena Superior Court. On January 31, 1990, the jury rejected the prosecution’s first-degree murder theory and convicted both of second-degree murder.3Los Angeles Times. Doyle and Severson Convicted of Second-Degree Murder Judge Jack B. Tso sentenced each to 15 years to life, the maximum available, on March 9, 1990.4Los Angeles Times. Doyle Sentenced for Second-Degree Murder
Why She Served 22 Years
Doyle was technically parole-eligible after about seven years with credit for time served, but the California Board of Parole Hearings repeatedly refused to release her. At a December 2004 hearing, the board cited the heinous nature of the crime, an unstable social history that included substance abuse, insufficient participation in self-help programs, and what it described as her failure to fully admit her role.5GovInfo. Doyle v. California, Case 1:06-cv-01863 She challenged that denial through state and federal habeas petitions, all of which were denied.
At an earlier hearing in 2002, Doyle had made a striking admission. She told the board, “We planned it, we did it,” said she had coaxed Avila into the water, and called Severson the “ringleader.” Asked to name three people from whom she would seek forgiveness, she listed her mother, herself, and Irene Avila, but not Missy. According to a deputy district attorney present at that hearing, Doyle said that if she could do it over again, she would switch places with Missy “so that she could endure the pain.”1Daily News. Last Woman Convicted in Missy Avila Murder Released From Prison
Why Her Name Faded While Severson’s Didn’t
Most of the public attention the case has drawn since 2012 has centered on Severson, not Doyle. Severson published two books after her release, the first in June 2013 under the pen name Kay Crayne, titled Hope Beyond the Fences, and a second in September 2014, My Life I Lived It. Irene Avila responded, “My daughter is dead in the ground and Karen is going to profit out of writing a book about her?”6ABC. Killer Could Profit From Selling Story of Murder Victim
In March 2015, the Avila family filed a civil suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Severson, her book distributors, and others, bringing claims for wrongful death, defamation, emotional distress, and conversion. Doyle was not named as a defendant.7Courthouse News Service. Family Sues Daughter’s Murderer The controversy also produced “Missy’s Law,” Assembly Bill 538, which Governor Jerry Brown signed on October 7, 2015; it requires notice to victims’ families when convicted offenders enter contracts to sell their crime stories.8ABC7. Murder Victim’s Family Celebrates Signing of Missy’s Law Doyle, having neither written a book nor been sued, remained outside all of it.
That silence is, at this point, the whole of the public record about her life after prison. Where in Southern California she went, what work she does, and what name she uses have not been publicly reported.