New Motive In Priest Slay?

When defrocked priest John Geoghan went to prison for molesting a boy, he worried that his notoriety as a pedophile would make him a target for other inmates.

He complained that inmates urinated and defecated on his pillow and tampered with his food. He told lawyers that guards called him Lucifer and Satan, and he did not go outside for more than a year for fear of being attacked.

Geoghan was finally transferred in April to a protective-custody unit, where he was locked in his cell for 21 hours a day.

"He felt safe. Too bad he wasn't," said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which provides legal assistance to inmates.

"It's absolutely unconscionable and outrageous," Walker said.

Geoghan, 68, was strangled Saturday, allegedly by a fellow inmate. He was also beaten, his ribs were broken and a lung was punctured.

Joseph L. Druce and Geoghan had been let out of their separate cells to return their lunch trays. Druce followed Geoghan back into his cell and jammed the door to prevent guards from coming to Geoghan's rescue, investigators said.

Inmate rights groups, priests and public officials called for an investigation into how Druce - who was serving a life sentence for a gay-bashing murder - was allowed to get near Geoghan, whose alleged molestation of about 150 children case triggered the sex scandal that has rocked the nation's Roman Catholic Church.

Geoghan had served more than a year of his nine- to 10-year sentence.

"His case was just so notorious and kept alive for so long, and he knew he was very vulnerable," Walker said. "They failed to protect him, even though he was in protective custody."

Gov. Mitt Romney called Geoghan's slaying "a failure of government."

"Society and government has a primary responsibility to protect all of its citizens, whether they are in their homes or on the streets or even in jail," Romney said. "In jail, we have a particular responsibility because these people are under our direct care."

Prisoner rights lawyers on Tuesday quoted an inmate who was in the protective custody unit as saying he had warned prison officials twice that Geoghan was in danger, but was ignored.

Jim Pingeon, litigation director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said there seemed to be a "culture of indifference to the safety of prisoners" in the unit.

The inmate, Robert Assad, is said to have spoken for two and a half hours with legal services agency lawyer Peter Costanza. Assad reportedly said Druce proposed a scheme in which he would commit a fake hate crime against Assad, who is an Arab-American, with the goal of being transferred to federal prison. Assad said he declined to participate in the scheme.

Costanza said Assad didn't say why Druce might have wanted to get into federal prison. But, Costanza said, "A lot of guys think federal prison is nicer. ... He might have felt safer, too."

According to Assad, Druce thought Geoghan could also serve as a hate crime target, because Druce apparently believed Geoghan was gay. Geoghan's sexual orientation was never established in the criminal and civil proceedings against him.

Assad also claimed that he had spoken to Geoghan a few days before he was killed. In that conversation, according to Assad, Geoghan said he was aware that Druce posed a threat to him, that he was afraid, and he had reported his fears to prison officials.

In neither instance did Assad identify the prison officials or guards who allegedly were told of threats to Geoghan.

Pingeon said his agency had interviewed two other unidentified prisoners on the unit Tuesday who claimed there had been a pattern on the part of the guards of "verbally harassing Geoghan or ... encouraging other prisoners to harass Geoghan, including specifically encouraging Druce to harass."

David Shaw, a spokesman for the special state panel investigating the murder, said, "Obviously, this information is information that we need, that we're going to use to determine where the responsibility for this incident lies."

"We're going to get to the truth. ... We're going to interview any and all individuals who may have helpful information related to this case," Shaw said.

Rob Brouillette, business agent for the Massachusetts Corrections Officers Federated Union, said he didn't believe that guards had any warning of Geoghan's murder.

"I think that's just another inmate trying to get his face in the news. I'm sure that probably won't be the last. ... We'll probably hear worse by the time this is all done," he said.

John LaChance, an attorney who was appointed Tuesday to represent Druce, said he hadn't met with his client yet.

Asked if Druce would mount an insanity defense as he did at his 1989 trial, LaChance said, "Obviously, we have to determine, first of all, whether he's competent and, second of all, assuming that he's competent, that he has a voice in his own defense."

By Denise Lavoie