An 11-year-old murder case that sent an innocent Newfoundland man to prison has been solved.

Brian Doyle, 32, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to second-degree murder in a court room in St. John's.

In 1991, Catherine Carroll was stabbed to death. Police arrested her son Gregory Parsons. He spent the next decade trying to prove his innocence.

Gregory Parsons

Doyle was arrested last June after a lengthy police investigation in Ontario.

According to the agreed statement of facts, police got Doyle to join a fictitious organized crime outfit. He agreed to run contraband tobacco and alcohol. And when one of the undercover officers told Doyle that he wanted his wife dead, Doyle offered to do it for him.

The undercover officers told Doyle that first they needed to know everything about him, including how Catherine Carroll died. That's when Doyle told them everything.

On New Year's Eve 1990, he went to Carroll's home, broke in through a basement window and stabbed and slashed her 53 times.

Her son was tried for murder and found guilty. But in 1998 DNA evidence cleared his name.

Parsons is refusing to talk to reporters, but his older brother Todd is angry that the charge of first-degree murder against Doyle was reduced to second-degree.

"If you look at how brutal this murder was, he walked into the bedroom, my mother's bedroom, totally naked with other intentions on his mind, and a brutal crime like that. And now he's falling back on the fact he was intoxicated."

On Wednesday, the court will finish watching a five-hour video of Doyle's police interrogation.

He faces a minimum of 10 years in prison.