A former Catholic priest died of a COVID-19 related illness before officials were able to arrest him for allegedly murdering a 13-year-old Massachusetts altar boy in 1972, numerous sources reported.
Richard Lavigne, 80, died of acute hypoxic respiratory failure and COVID-19 pneumonia on Friday, his death certificate said according to Daily Hampshire Gazette. Lavigne was defrocked in 2003 after pleading guilty to child molestation roughly a decade earlier.
Former Roman Catholic priest Richard Lavigne was the only named suspect in the death of 13 year old Danny Croteau of Springfield. But the 1972 crime went unsolved even after the priest was convicted of sexually molesting boys in 1992. https://t.co/i5NJgwCbf9
— GBH News (@GBHNews) May 24, 2021
On the same day as Lavigne’s death, Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni announced that his office would be seeking an arrest warrant for Lavigne for the murder of Danny Croteau, but had learned that Lavigne died, a statement said.
Today, thanks to tireless work of @HampdenDA and Troopers from our Unresolved Cases Unit and Hampden County Detective Unit, and #Chicopee police, the late Richard Lavigne was announced as the person who killed 13-year-old Danny Croteau (pictured) in 1972. https://t.co/3MMZu9o1xZ pic.twitter.com/4ut1p985cT
— Mass State Police (@MassStatePolice) May 24, 2021
“Danny’s parents, Carl and Bernice, told reporters that they just wanted answers. Based on the accumulation of historical evidence, the evidence gained in the last year, and the admissions of Richard Lavigne, I believe we now have those answers,” Gulluni said in the statement.
#BREAKING: Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni has announced the investigation is closed in the 1972 murder of a 13-year-old Springfield altar boy due to the death of Father Richard Lavigne’s death last week.
— Nick Aresco (@ArescoNick) May 24, 2021
“While they didn’t come in time for Danny’s parents to hear them, I hope that the answers provided today are helpful to Danny’s remaining family who have suffered for so long,” Gulluni added. Croteau’s parents have both passed.
Croteau was found dead in the Connecticut River in Chicopee, Massachusetts on April 15, 1972, still wearing his school uniform from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, according to the district attorney’s office.
Croteau and his four brothers served as altar boys for Lavigne at Saint Catherine of Sienna in Springfield, and Lavigne was a friend of the family’s, according to the district attorney’s office.
“After Danny’s murder, Lavigne became a person of interest for investigators in the early stages of the investigation because of the inconsistent and unusual statements he had made to them in the days after the murder,” the statement says.
Investigators said Lavigne had lied about when he last saw Croteau, and Lavigne was seen alone at the riverbank on the day after the boy’s body was discovered, according to the statement.
During a press conference, Gulluni played a clip of Lavigne saying “I just remember being heartbroken when I saw his body going down the river knowing I was responsible for giving him a good shove,” according to NBC News Boston.
Police interviewed Lavigne over the course of a month before his death, totaling approximately 11 hours of dialogue, according to the statement. During all of the interviews, Lavigne allegedly refused to specifically admit he killed Croteau, and investigators described his behavior as “cagey and evasive.”
“He made several statements to indicate that he was the last person to see Danny Croteau alive, that he brought him to the riverbank on April 14, 1972, that he physically assaulted him there, and after leaving Danny there and returning a short time later, that he saw Danny floating face down in the river,” the district attorney’s statement says.
Police noted that during an initial interview with Lavigne following the discovery of Croteau’s body, he asked them “if a stone was used and thrown in the river, would blood still be on it?” Investigators said they collected blood-stained soil and blood-spattered rocks from the crime scene, which confirmed the blood was a match to Croteau’s, according to the statement.
Several altar boys accused Lavigne of long-term sexual abuse. One victim recalled Croteau telling Lavigne “I’ll tell!” during a camping trip in 1968, causing the priest to turn extremely serious, NBC News reported.
Croteau’s body was found with a blood alcohol level that would make him legally drunk, and both his stomach and pocket contained chewing gum. The sexual-abuse victims reportedly told investigators that Lavigne would use alcohol and chewing gum to loosen the boys’ inhibitions.
Croteau’s brother also reportedly told investigators in January 2021 that in the months before Danny’s murder, Danny would return from being with Lavigne and would be sick to his stomach from drinking alcohol.
Two days after the discovery of Croteau’s body, the Croteau family received a phone call from what sounded like a man, who said “we’re very sorry what happened to Danny. He saw something behind the Circle he shouldn’t have seen. It was an accident,” according to the district attorney’s office. Croteau’s brother Carl, then 19, was the one who picked up the phone and told police he recognized that the voice was Lavigne’s.
Police also revisited a letter Lavigne told investigators he recieved in 2004 from Croteau’s murderer that was unsigned and had no return address. A forensic linguistic expert analyzed the letter in March 2021 and based on comparisons to letters written by Lavigne, determined that the “language patterns in the questioned document are consistent with language patterns in the known Lavigne documents to the point that Richard R. Lavigne cannot be excluded as a possible candidate of authorship,” the district attorney’s statement said.
“It is incredibly disheartening to learn that a priest, a person ordained to care for God’s people, would have committed such an evil crime and then not taken responsibility for his actions,” Bishop William D. Byrne, the bishop of the Springfield diocese, said, according to CNN. “This is all totally contrary to the teachings that we as Catholics believe in and hold sacred.