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April 5, 2002 at
MCI Norfolk, MA
Q: What was your reaction when you received the DNA
test results?
LAGUER: When
I got the news, I was really sick, for like ten minutes. Then I shook it off. And I said, we will deal with this again and
anew, the same way we have dealt with ten other court denials, two parole board denials. The same way we have dealt with all
the other times that there have been a setback, we will deal with this. Everything that I am has helped me to get up every
morning for twenty years and say this is not so. I don't do anything else but be in defense of my family and my honor. That's
all I know how to do. I don't know how to do anything else.
I'm not delusional, and the truth will come out. And as
easy as some people wanted to find me innocent, and as shocked as they were, they will be, maybe, maybe not now, maybe not
next week, but in time the truth will come out. The truth always comes out, you see because people, we're still finding stuff
that happened to Dr. King what is it? Thirty years later. Almost forty years later, we're still finding out that maybe somebody
else did it.
The truth always comes out. And my heart is calm. My quality
of mind is good. My compassion is good. I will still not renounce my father's God who has protected me for twenty years.
Q: How do
you explain that your DNA profile matches the one found at the crime scene?
LAGUER: When
you hear that underwears were stolen from my apartment. When you hear that socks were stolen from my apartment. And you say,
why would I believe this convict? You don't until you see the proof. The proof will astonish (sic) what the police did. The
police went into my apartment and took socks and took underwears that belonged to me. How is it that so little male DNA was
found only on one slide? Thirty different DNA testing and it's not, it's on one place and nowhere else? How could that be?
We will explain this.
Q: After hearing
the news, many of your supporters have walked away from you. What are you going to do now that you do not have as much support?
LAGUER: I
started out with no support. And that support was built because there was confidence in reporters, in people who I have said
I will never lie to you. And for 20 years I called a group of reporters and everything. And they stuck with me for this long
because they can never say, nobody at the Globe, nobody in Channel 5, nobody in the Worcester Telegram, can say to you Ben
called me and what he has said turned out not to be true except for this. For twenty years, what kind of con is that? What
did, what con did I pull for twenty years?
I only asked people to help me to pry the truth from John Conte's office. That's
it. You know I've never asked John Silber to help me. John Silber offered to help me. I went to the parole board and I never
asked him for his support on the first parole. I never asked him, not once.
I never asked Noam Chomsky to write letters.
They offered. They offered because they saw in my letters and in the press clippings what I was trying to do. I never have
spoken to a single supporter and said "Go out and say Ben is innocent." I said, "Help me to pry the truth from John Conte."
And if that's a con—I never asked people for money
for me so that I could do leisurely stuff. I asked them to help me - I asked John Conte to help pay for this DNA testing if
he was interested in the truth. And he wouldn't. How am I supposed to get DNA testing? How am I supposed to get to the truth,
if it's not on my own?
Q: In light
of all this information about the DNA test results, there is no chance for a new trial or a release by the parole board. What
is your next step?
LAGUER: If
I wanted to get out of jail, I could have gotten out of jail a long time ago. This is not about me trying to get out of jail.
This is about the truth of, about what happened to that woman and the honor of my family. You understand? This is not about
me. If I wanted to get out of jail, I could have said, "Yes, I will plead guilty" nineteen years ago and they promised to
drop the rape charges and it would have been assault and battery. And they had ways of making this happen.
But I said
no. Twenty more years in jail. The only constant thing that has ever happened in this case is that the truth flowed from that
file cabinets. And we know now because of me and my insistence. We know more about what happened to that woman nineteen years
ago than we ever thought we knew during the trial. And that's because of me, because I was in search of the truth. What Ed
Blake had to say may be a fact of a testing on one slide. It is not the truth of my life.
Q: Some people
think that you are in denial of committing the crime. Is that a possibility?
LAGUER: Listen,
I'm not beyond a confession. I have been—everything that the prosecutors know about me—that I tampered with the
saliva sample—that I called the victim disguised as a priest—what happened that I had the parole board's resume,
twenty-seven tickets in the Department of Corrections: I have all pleaded guilty to. When I had an incident in the army over
when the police first asked me about do you smoke, do you take drugs? Yes, I do. I am not beyond a confession. I'm not beyond
saying you know the evidence is so overwhelming that I have no choice. I don't want to stay in jail. I'm not a hater of freedom.
But I'm not going to disgrace my father's name for something that I did not do.
On this one point, if nobody in the world cares about
it, I care about it. And on this one last point, I will die in jail saying I did not do that crime against that woman and
I'm perfectly content with it. Maybe in another five years, maybe in another ten years, maybe in another thirty years, new
evidence of what was tampered with will surface. I'm willing to do that for my father's name. I'm willing to die in jail in
defense of the honor of our family. I was not delusional. I don't want nobody to say, start psycho-babbling about my state
of mind, because those people don't really know me and are not qualified to say. All they know is what was said at that trial,
what was in police reports. And that's all I've asked them to look at. | 
