Child Molester Priest Killed in Mass. Prison

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By Boston Globe

Published: 08/25/2003

Defrocked priest John J. Geoghan was bound, gagged, strangled, and stomped by a fellow inmate who followed the notorious child molester into a cell Saturday afternoon while one prison officer was distracted with other prisoners and another officer was temporarily away from the area, according to correctional officer union officials.
The fellow inmate, Joseph L. Druce, then jumped from Geoghan's bed onto Geoghan's chest at least twice, the officials said.
'An officer heard a noise, went over to the cell, and he saw Geoghan on the floor, gagged and tied,' said Robert W. Brouillette, business agent for a 5,000-member corrrectional officer union. 'Druce was standing on the bunk.'
Brouillette's account of the attack comes from correctional officers who work at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center.
Geoghan, hands tied behind his back, was strangled with either one of his T-shirts or a bed sheet, and beaten, Brouillette said.
Druce used one of Geoghan's shoes or sneakers to tighten the sheet or shirt, another union official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. 'He twisted the shoe to tighten the ligature around Geoghan's neck,' the official said. 'It all happened in a matter of minutes.'
Brouillette said six or seven officers, alerted by a commotion in the cell, rushed to the scene but were unable to immediately open Geoghan's cell because, he said, Druce had jammed it from inside, perhaps with a stick.
Brouillette said there is no video surveillance inside the inmates' cells.
Union officials said inmates had finished their lunch, eaten on trays in their cells. The inmates had returned their trays to a common collection area outside their cells, when Druce trailed Geoghan and pounced on him in his quarters, the officials said.
One official said Druce had been closely following the unit's staffing patterns the last three months, apparently in an effort to strike when staffing levels were at their barest minimum. 'These guys have nothing better to do 24 hours a day than to watch what you do and how you do it,' said Brouillette, who represents the Massachusetts Correctional Officers Federated Union.
Union officials yesterday said they have complained about inadequate staffing levels in the protective custody unit, which opened earlier this year. The area where the attack took place is typically patrolled by two correctional officers, but during Geoghan's assault, one officer was assigned to monitor lunch activities elsewhere, one of the officials said. The union had been seeking to have three officers on duty.
The details about the assault came as state officials struggled to explain how a serial pedophile could have been left alone with an inmate convicted of a 'gay-bashing' murder.
Prisoner rights activists yesterday called for an independent probe into Geoghan's strangulation death inside Massachusetts' most modern and secure prison.
Nantel acknowledged there are 366 surveillance cameras at the Souza-Baranowski facility, which straddles the town line between Shirley, which is in Middlesex County, and Lancaster, which is in Worcester County. She would not say whether Saturday's attack, or the events that led up to it, was captured on videotape.
Geoghan, whose serial child molestation offenses helped to ignite the roiling scandal in the Catholic Church, was housed in a unit away from the prison's general population with inmates deemed not to pose a threat to him, Nantel said.
The state is investigating how officials could have allowed Geoghan, 68, to share the same prison space as his alleged killer -- the 37-year-old Druce, a convicted murderer with a white supremacist past and an apparent disdain for homosexuals. Geoghan was accused of molesting about 150 children, mostly boys.
Nantel said the correction department's policy is to keep any two inmates with a documented history of antagonism apart, even if that means allowing only one into the protective custody unit.
But prisoner rights leaders said Geoghan's slaying should be the focus of an independent probe, declaring the state Department of Correction incapable of policing itself.
As an inmate in the maximum security prison's protective custody unit, Geoghan was locked alone in a cell secured by a wooden door with a window cut into it except for the roughly three hours a day he was allowed out of his cell. State prison regulations require correctional officers to make rounds at least every 30 minutes.

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