Hampden DA identifies former Catholic priest as killer in 1972 slaying of 13-year-old Danny Croteau - The Boston Globe

Nearly a half century after the body of 13-year-old Danny Croteau was found floating in the Chicopee River, surviving relatives of the murdered boy joined Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni Monday as he identified disgraced former Catholic priest Richard R. Lavigne, a sex offender who died last week, as the killer.

Gulluni said the former priest died Friday evening in a hospital facility in Greenfield. He was 80. Hours before Lavigne’s death, Gulluni said, he had authorized state troopers attached to his office to seek an arrest warrant charging him for the murder.

During interviews in the weeks before Lavigne’s death, Gulluni said, the former priest spoke for a combined 11 hours to investigators and, while never admitting directly to killing the boy, conceded he was the last person to see Danny alive and that he brought him to the riverbank on April 14, 1972. Gulluni said he also admitted to physically assaulting Danny there and leaving, before returning a short time later and seeing the child’s body floating in the river.

Hampden DA identifies killer in 1972 slaying of 13-year-old

Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni identified Richard R. Lavigne, who died last week, as the killer of 13-year-old Danny Croteau.

“Regrettably, due to Lavigne’s death, there will be no prosecution or trial,” Gulluni said. “But due to the credible and significant evidence that has been assembled in the last year that incriminates Richard Lavigne, I am announcing today that the investigation into the murder of Danny Croteau is now officially closed. While formal justice might not have befallen Richard Lavigne here on this earth, we hope to now provide answers and some measure of closure to Danny’s family and to a generation in Western Massachusetts and beyond who mourned and wondered for too long.”

A brother of Croteau, Joe Croteau, also addressed reporters.

“We’re disappointed that he’s not being brought to justice, but just like the district attorney, we believe there’s a higher power, and he will face that higher power now,” Joe Croteau said.

In a statement released after the briefing, Springfield Bishop William D. Byrne called the case “another reminder” of the church’s past failures. He said the news that Gulluni “was prepared to charge Richard Lavigne in the murder of Danny Croteau in 1972 brings sad closure to a tragic event which I know has hung over our faith community for decades. I was angered and sickened to hear Lavigne’s unapologetic admissions in the heinous murder of this innocent child.”

The last photo taken of Danny Croteau.

Lavigne died Friday at the Baystate Medical Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, according to state records. The immediate cause of death was “acute hypoxic respiratory failure” and the underlying cause was “COVID-19 pneumonia,” according to state records.

Croteau was 13 when his body was found floating face down in the river a few miles from his Springfield home on April 15, 1972. Croteau, an altar boy, was killed by a crushing blow to his head, likely with a rock, and his body was then thrown into the river, the Globe has reported.

On Monday, Gulluni played chilling recordings from the interviews Lavigne had given to a State Police investigator in the weeks before his death.

At one point on the recordings, Lavigne says, “I don’t remember hitting him down by the riverbank” before telling the trooper he gave Croteau “a good shove.” Asked why, Lavigne says “because he was being ... " before his voice trails off.

Lavigne later tells the trooper he saw Croteau floating face down in the river and recognized him by “the way he was dressed. ... I don’t remember what I did” after seeing the boy in the water. “I don’t remember telling anyone.”

Lavigne adds at one point, “I just remember being heartbroken when I saw his body ... knowing I was responsible for giving him a good shove, you know?”

Joe Croteau said Monday that the recordings were disturbing to hear.

Hampden DA shares recordings from interviews with Lavigne

Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni shared audio recordings from interviews Richard R. Lavigne had given in the weeks before his death.

“To hear the voice of a sociopath like that guy is bone chilling,” Joe Croteau said. “It’s unbelievable. I’m awfully glad that my parents will never hear this.”

Croteau and his four brothers all served as altar boys at St. Catherine of Siena parish in Springfield in the 1970s where Lavigne was assigned. Sleepovers at the rectory became common for some of the boys and Lavigne also had some children stay with him at his parents’ Chicopee home, the Globe has reported.

Lavigne has long been considered the only suspect in the boy’s murder and while he was convicted of other crimes against children in the 1990s, he has never been charged in connection with Croteau’s death. He was a Level 3 sex offender at the time of his reported death, according to the Sex Offender Registry Board.

During the initial stage of the investigation into Croteau’s death, a Chicopee detective noticed Lavigne walking near where the boy’s body was found, and was later interviewed by the detective who memorialized two questions the priest asked of the police.

“If a stone was used and thrown in the river, would the blood still be on it?” he asked, according to the written report.

And, “in such a popular hangout with so many cars and footprints, how can the prints you have be of any help?”

In 1993, a witness recalled that during a camping trip with Lavigne and Croteau in 1967 or 1968, Croteau repeatedly challenged Lavigne by shouting “I’ll tell! I’ll tell!,” the Globe reported. The witness said Lavigne molested him that night, leading the witness to conclude Croteau was threatening to publicly disclose being molested by Lavigne.

In March of 2020, Gulluni said, the case picked up steam again shortly after the creation of a State Police Unresolved Cases Unit in his office. A trooper was assigned to head the Croteau case, Gulluni said, and the team poured over thousands of documents in the subsequent months.

Gulluni said Lavigne had been a person of interest in the early stages of the probe in the 1970s due to “inconsistent and unusual statements” he made, including lying about the last time he had seen Croteau, and because witnesses disputed the priest’s claim that he was never alone with the boy.

Two days after Croteau’s body was found, Gulluni said, a call was placed to the family home, and one of the boy’s siblings, then-19, picked up.

A male voice, Gulluni said, told Carl Croteau, “we’re very sorry what happened to Danny. He saw something behind the Circle he shouldn’t have seen. It was an accident.” The caller, he said, wouldn’t identify himself. But Carl Jr. told investigators he recognized the voice as belonging to Lavigne.

And, Gulluni said, Carl Jr. told investigators on Jan. 27 of this year that he recalled in the weeks before Danny’s slaying that his younger sibling would return from being with Lavigne sick to his stomach from drinking alcohol. Carl Jr. also said Danny was normally with Lavigne on the weekends, specifically Friday nights, according to Gulluni.

On March 23, 2004, Gulluni said, Lavigne showed an acquaintance who worked for the Diocese of Springfield an anonymous, type-written letter he claimed to have received that he asserted must’ve been penned by “the murderer himself because of the guilt it described.”

On April 6 of that year, Gulluni said, police executed a search warrant at Lavigne’s Chicopee home in an effort to find the note. He said Lavigne told investigators at the time that he received the letter sometime in January 2004 and was “very suspicious” of it because it lacked a return address.

Lavigne, Gulluni said, described an elaborate process of opening the letter with tweezers and placing it in a plastic bag prior to reading it because “he knew about fingerprints and DNA.” Lavigne, Gulluni said, also described his initial reaction to seeing the letter as “chilling.”

On March 5 of this year, the DA said, authorities put the letter to Dr. Robert Leonard, a forensic linguistics expert, who compared the note to other writings authored by Lavigne.

On May 21, the day Lavigne died, Gulluni said, Leonard informed his office that he’d determined to a “reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that the language patterns in the 2004 note are “consistent with language patterns” in Lavigne’s other writings, to the point where he couldn’t be excluded as the possible author.

Lavigne was removed from active ministry in 1991, when he was charged with sexually abusing children. But even after his 1992 conviction, leaders of the Springfield Diocese did not push to have him laicized. Under pressure from Lavigne’s victims and their supporters, the Vatican defrocked him in 2003, the Globe has reported.

The diocese paid 17 of Lavigne’s victims $1.4 million in a 1994 settlement and paid out an additional $7.7 million to 46 victims in 2004, the Globe has reported. Other litigation was also pursued against the church and Lavigne, records show.

DNA testing done on blood recovered in the early 2000s from the crime scene was inconclusive.

Father Richard Lavigne at his home in Springfield in 2003.��

Every district attorney before Gullini has believed Lavigne was Croteau’s killer, but predecessors Matthew J. Ryan Jr. and William Bennett, who held the job for 20 years after Ryan, told the Globe there was never enough evidence to file charges against him.

“What you think and what you can prove in court are two different things,” Ryan told the Globe’s Kevin Cullen in 2003.

Bennett launched the DNA testing in the early 2000s, but declined to file any charges after the biological evidence failed to establish a firm forensic link between Lavigne and the former altar boy.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, a longtime advocate for sexual abuse victims who has represented some of Lavigne’s victims, said he received calls Monday from victims across the country expressing sympathy for the Croteau family and “dismay at feeling cheated again” because Lavigne was never prosecuted and sent to prison for the slaying.

He called on Gulluni’s office to subpoena the secret files of the Springfield Diocese to determine whether they contain additional evidence indicating that Lavigne murdered Danny Croteau.

“The question arises what did the supervisors of Father Lavigne know and when did they know it,” Garabedian said. “If there is a criminal coverup by the Diocese of Springfield, the District Attorney’s office should get to the bottom of it so the Croteau family can heal, the truth can be revealed and children can be kept safe.”

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available. Shelley Murphy of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.

Material from earlier Globe coverage of the Croteau murder and Lavigne’s alleged role in the child’s death was used in this report.

John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe. Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.