Ex-priest Geoghan killed in prison

[Jolie Rouge]

www.msnbc.com/news/956496.asp?vts=082420031240

BOSTON, Aug. 24 — Former priest John Geoghan, the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died Saturday after being attacked in prison. Preliminary indications are that Geoghan, 68, was strangled, Worcester District Attorney John J. Conte said. An autopsy will be conducted Monday.

CONTE SAID fellow inmate Joseph L. Druce, 37, attacked Geoghan shortly before noon Saturday. Geoghan died at 1:17 p.m., shortly after he was taken to UMass Memorial Health Alliance, Leominster Campus, Conte said.

Druce, who received a life sentence in 1989 for murder, armed robbery and other counts, was placed in isolation and will face murder charges in Geoghan’s death, Conte said. In 2001, Druce was charged with mailing a threatening letter containing white powder and indicating it was contaminated with anthrax.

The attack took place shortly after lunchtime at Souza-Baranowski Correction Center, about 30 miles northwest of Boston, Department of Correction spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said. Geoghan was being held in protective custody to shield him from the general prison population, but he had some contact with other inmates in protective custody.

The church abuse scandal, which has had repercussions worldwide, broke in early 2002 with revelations that the church had shuttled Geoghan from parish to parish despite warnings about his behavior.
The scandal mushroomed after a judge ordered the release of archdiocese files involving dozens of priests, showing repeated examples of the archdiocese shipping priests to different parishes when allegations arose.

130 CLAIMS OF ABUSE

Geoghan was convicted in January 2002 of indecent assault and battery for grabbing the buttocks of a 10-year-old boy in 1991 in the first of three criminal cases against him. He was sentenced to nine to 10 years in prison. In civil lawsuits, more than 130 people have claimed Geoghan sexually abused them as children during his three decades as a priest at Boston-area parishes.

In September 2002, the archdiocese settled with 86 Geoghan victims for $10 million, after pulling out of an earlier settlement of about $30 million.

Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney for many Geoghan victims, said he was “surprised and shocked” by Geoghan’s death. “Many of my clients would have rather seen Father Geoghan serve out his time in jail and endure the rigors of further criminal trials, so that his pedophile acts could have been exposed further,” he said.

PRAYERS FOR A SOUL’S ‘REPOSE’

Rev. Christopher Coyne, a spokesman for the Boston archdiocese, offered prayers for Geoghan’s family. “Upon hearing the news of the tragic death of John Geoghan, the Archdiocese of Boston offers prayer for the repose of John’s soul, and extends its prayers in consolation to his beloved sister, Kathy, at this time of personal loss,” he said.

Ralph DelVecchio, a Geoghan victim who settled with the archdiocese last year, said Geoghan deserved prison, but didn’t deserve to be killed. “I wouldn’t say he deserved to die, you know?” DelVecchio said. “He was in jail — that’s where I believed he should be.” DelVecchio said he didn’t wish ill on Geoghan. “It’s over with,” he said.

[Jolie Rouge]

DA Says Suspect Planned Priest's Killing
By DENISE LAVOIE

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1110&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20030825%2F152888361.htm&sc=1110&photoid=20030825BX101

BOSTON (AP) - The suspect in the prison cell slaying of defrocked pedophile priest John Geoghan hated homosexuals and planned the killing weeks in advance, a prosecutor said Monday.

Joseph L. Druce, a fellow inmate in the maximum security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, even torn apart a book to make a tool for jamming the door of Geoghan's cell, Worcester District Attorney John J. Conte said.

Druce ``has a longstanding phobia, it appears, toward homosexuals of any kind. ... He is filled with longstanding hate,'' Conte said at a news conference in Worcester.

Druce is serving a life term for killing a gay man 15 years ago.


Geoghan, 68, was killed Saturday in his cell while serving a nine- to 10-year sentence for assault and battery on a 10-year-old boy. He'd been in protective custody since being transferred to Souza-Baranowski in April, officials said.


The former priest was accused of molesting nearly 150 boys over three decades and became a catalyst for the clergy sex abuse scandal that shook the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church.


Conte said Druce had confessed to the crime. Asked if Druce seemed proud of having killed Geoghan, Conte replied: ``Absolutely. No question about that.''


He also said authorities would investigate why the safeguards supposed to be in place for inmates in protective custody weren't enough to save Geoghan.


Druce entered Geoghan's cell undetected some time before the cell block was closed at 11:52 a.m. Saturday, Conte said. He jammed the book into the track of the cell door to prevent guards from opening the door. He had precut the book to fit into the track, Conte said.


Druce then tied Geoghan's hands behind his back with a T-shirt and used socks, which he had been stretching for some time, Conte said. He also brought in a razor ``to do further harm'' but wound up not using it, Conte said.


The guard on duty tried to respond, but found the door was jammed. By the time a nurse arrived to treat Geoghan, seven or eight minutes had passed, Conte said. Geoghan was taken to Leominster Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:17 p.m. An autopsy found he died of strangulation and blunt chest trauma, and suffered broken ribs and punctured lungs, Conte said.


``No question he had been planning (the attack) for well over a month,'' Conte said of Druce, who he said has been very cooperative with investigators.


Gov. Mitt Romney on Monday appointed a panel to conduct an independent investigation into the death.


``We cannot escape the fact that an inmate died while in the care of the Department of Correction,'' state Public Safety Secretary Ed Flynn said.


Druce, 37, a reputed member of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nation, was convicted in the June 1988 murder of George Rollo, 51, a gay bus driver who had picked Druce up hitchhiking.


According to court documents, a fellow hitchhiker told investigators that Druce, who then went by his birth name, Darrin E. Smiledge, attacked the bus driver when Rollo made a sexual advance. An insanity defense failed and Smiledge was sentenced to life in prison.


The suspect also pleaded guilty to sending fake anthrax from prison to lawyers with Jewish-sounding names and was sentenced to an additional 37 months in prison.


Geoghan's abuses cut a wide swath through parishes in the Boston Archdiocese - and he came to symbolize the horrors of pedophile priests and the exhaustive steps church hierarchy would take to keep the allegations under wraps.


``Geoghan personified the pedophile priest,'' said Jim Post, president of Voice of the Faithful, a lay reform group formed in the wake of the abuse scandal.


Victims of Geoghan expressed mixed emotions about his sudden death.


``He's never going to hurt anybody again, and at the same time, he still had a lot of penance to do on Earth,'' said Michael Linscott, 45, who says he was abused by Geoghan from 1967 to 1972.


Molestation scandals had hit the church in America for nearly two decades, with notorious cases involving priests and dioceses in Lafayette, La., in 1984; Fall River, Mass., in 1992; and Dallas in 1993.


But in January 2002, the church's role in the handling of priests, long sealed in the courts, first came to light when a judge ordered the release of documents in Geoghan's civil cases.


They showed that Geoghan, who was ordained in 1962, continually had been allowed to return to pastoral service, despite mounting evidence of compulsive pedophilia.


``It was the first time objective evidence was produced to show that the Archdiocese of Boston, through its supervisors, allowed the abuse to continue,'' said attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents more than 200 alleged victims of Geoghan and other clergy.


Geoghan eventually was granted early retirement in 1996 and praised for an ``effective life of ministry, sadly impaired by illness'' by Cardinal Bernard Law, who ultimately resigned in December 2002 for his role in the scandal.


With legal troubles mounting, Geoghan was defrocked in 1998, and in December 1999 charged with raping and molesting three boys. The archdiocese eventually settled with 86 Geoghan victims for $10 million.



08/25/03 15:28

[nanajoanie]

I don't wish anyone dead but I'm glad our tax dollars don't have to feed and house this monster.............

[Jolie Rouge]

Inmate implicates second convict in priest killing
From Jason Carroll New York Bureau
Tuesday, August 26, 2003 Posted: 6:34 PM EDT

www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/26/geoghan.investigation/index.html


(CNN) -- Another inmate may have offered money to the convict who confessed to the Boston area prison cell killing of a defrocked Roman Catholic priest convicted as a pedophile, a prisoners' advocate assisting the investigation told CNN Tuesday.

Joseph Druce, the alleged killer, told prosecutors he beat and then strangled John Geoghan Saturday after he jammed the former priest's cell door with a book, toothbrush and a nail clipper, authorities said.

James Pingeon, litigation director for the prisoner advocacy group that had monitored conditions of Geoghan's incarceration and is assisting in the investigation of his death, said Druce, 37, told a fellow inmate that another prisoner, described as a powerful gang member, offered him money to kill the 68-year-old defrocked priest.

The inmate informant -- identified as Robert Assan -- told Pingeon he warned prison guards that Druce decided to commit a crime in hopes it would prompt officials to transfer him to another facility. Assan claims the guards ignored the warning, Pingeon told CNN.

Pingeon said an attorney for his organization, Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, interviewed Assan Tuesday. He said Assan contacted the group Monday to tell his story.

An official in the office of Worcester District Attorney John Conte said its investigators also want to interview Assan.

On Monday, Conte said, "Druce appears to be the single defendant," but he added, "as to whether or not anyone else was involved and there was any intent we will certainly be looking into that."

State officials said they would conduct two separate investigations into the weekend strangling death of Geoghan by Druce, who plotted for more than a month to kill the convicted pedophile and considered him "a prize."

"Our system of justice is not and should not be a system of frontier justice," Conte told reporters in Worcester.

DA: 'I would say that he's filled with longstanding hate'
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Saturday's killing at Souza-Baranowski Prison outside Boston has raised questions about why Geoghan, who was in protective custody at his own request, was housed a few cells away from Druce, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for killing a gay man.

Conte said Druce "has a longstanding phobia, it appears, towards homosexuals of any kind. I'm not a psychologist and I'm not a psychiatrist, but I would say that he's filled with longstanding hate."

He said the killer meticulously planned the attack, working out details "for over a month."

An autopsy by Boston's chief medical examiner ruled the cause of death to be ligature strangulation and blunt chest trauma -- broken ribs and a punctured lung -- "and the manner of death as a homicide," Conte said.

Conte said his investigation would look into whether negligence or anyone else was involved.

"Mr. Druce himself said he was the only one involved, but we're not taking that at face value."

Senior CNN New York Producer Ronni Berke contributed to this report

[momfromTN]

I cannot say I am mourning his passing.

[DreamWarrior]

I cant say I'm sorry to hear that...