A March 2002 test revealed a miniscule amount of Benjamin
LaGuer's DNA in evidence from a 1983 rape for which he is serving a life sentence. LaGuer is asking for a new
trial at which a jury can evaluate the meaning and weight of this result. Key questions will be why LaGuer's underwear
mysteriously turned up in the evidence in August 1983 and then equally mysteriously disappeared in May 1989.
Search Warrant Return
click to enlarge
THE SOCKS Lead To....
On July 14 - the day after the crime was committed
and a day before LaGuer was arrested - police searched LaGuer's apartment. The search warrant return indicates that "nothing"
was seized.
search warrant excerpt
click for full document
Sock found in victim's apartment (front and back)
click to enlarge
Among the items the search warrant lists as being sought
is the match to a tube sock found in the victim's apartment. A list of items taken from the crime scene in Detective Carignan's police reports (below) includes that sock, a pair of panty hose and two pairs of underwear. None of this evidence - or any other physical
or forensic evidence - was introduced at trial. An inventory made in 1989 (further down the page) shows a third pair of underwear
inexplicably joined the evidence.
From page 3 of Det. Carignan's first report
click for full police report
Detective Carignan, in his police report, noted seeing tube
socks in LaGuer's apartment that were similar in style but not in color to the one found at the crime scene.
From page 2 of Det. Carignan's second report
click for full police report
from Esquire Magazine May 1994
click to enlarge
photo taken by Robert Terk on 5/11/89
click to enlarge
Detective Carignan wrote in his police report and the warrant return that he took nothing from LaGuer's apartment. He also testified to this at trial on both direct and cross-examination. Yet socks fitting the description in his police report of socks he saw in LaGuer's
apartment mysteriously turned up in the evidence. Three socks appeared in photos taken by LaGuer's then attorney Robert Terk
on May 11, 1989 (left). Eight socks, including those three, appeared in a photo published in Esquire Magazine in May 1994 (right).
Rep. Ellen Story
These socks also appeared in a State Police evidence authentication inventory of May 12, 2000 (below). According to this inventory a tag with the initials "LJH" was attached
to some socks. Rep. Ellen Story and five other members of the Massachusetts State Legislature want to find out who "LJH" is.
So far letters to State Police crime lab case manager Gwen Pino and to Worcester Superior Court Clerk Francis A. Ford haven't
yielded an answer.
From page 2 of State Police inventory
click to see full inventory
....The UNDERWEAR
from Receiving Log
click to enlarge
Receiving Log
click to enlarge
On August 3, 1983 - three weeks after the crime, two weeks
after the bulk of the evidence was delivered to the crime lab and a day after LaGuer was indicted - Detective Carignan delivered
"underclothes from suspect" to the lab. Assistant chemist Mark T. Grant signed for them. LaGuer's name appears at the top
of the form as the "suspect."
from Mark T. Grant's notes
click for full set of notes
Mark T. Grant's lab notes show that he conducted an AP (acid
phosphatase) test for semen on the "interior crotch" of the "suspect" underwear he received on "8-3."
Internal prosecution copy of Grant's report
click to enlarge
Astonishingly, somebody wrote "also Benjie's underwear"
on an internal prosecution copy of Mark T. Grant's forensic report. This document was part of LaGuer's Leominster Police file,
which he obtained in April 2001 subsequent to a Freedom of Information Act request. But the trail of documents grows even
stranger.....
On April 27, 1989 prosecutor James Lemire told the court
that the evidence from the case had gone missing.
On May 11, 1989 LaGuer's attorney Robert Terk found the
evidence in a cardboard box in the Leominster Police station.
On May 17, 1989 District Attorney John Conte's office dispatched
Trooper William Kokocinski to retrieve the evidence in anticipation of a hearing on LaGuer's motion for a new trial.
Also on May 17, 1989 Leominster Police Lieutenant Francis
J. Ptak Jr. drew up a hand written and then a typed inventory of the evidence before he turned it over to Trooper Kokocinski.
Lt. Francis Ptak's 5/17/89 inventory
click to enlarge
Lt. Francis Ptak's 5/17/89 inventory
click to enlarge
Lt. Ptak's inventory clearly shows there were three (3)
pairs of underwear in the evidence when it left the Leominster Police station on May 17, 1989. His inventories were illegally
withheld from LaGuer and his lawyers. They were part of LaGuer's Leominster Police file that he obtained through a Freedom
of Information Act request in April 2001.
from Lt. Francis Ptak's 5/17/89 inventory
click to enlarge
from transcripts of the 5/22/89 hearing
click for full page
When prosecutors presented the evidence in court five days
later, during the May 22, 1989 hearing, there were only two (2) pairs of underwear. The hearing transcripts show that Barry Berke, a third-year law student assisting LaGuer, was perplexed when prosecutor James Lemire presented two pairs of female
underwear. The "suspects" underwear had disappeared and the paper trail was hidden from the defense.
Questions about
2002 DNA Results
from the March 21, 2002 FSA report
On March 21, 2002, after LaGuer spent more than two years
and $30,000 in donated money to even allow DNA testing to be conducted, Forensic Science Associates identified a miniscule
amount of genetic material as LaGuer's. Initially neither FSA nor Cellmark Diagnostics, the government appointed lab, could
find enough sperm from which to derive a profile. Only once the evidence was concentrated at FSA, allowing technicians to
pool material from several items in the rape kit, was a miniscule amount of LaGuer's DNA identified.
This result, in isolation, does not prove that Benjamin
LaGuer raped his 59-year-old neighbor in 1983. It is one piece of information a jury should consider in the context of everything
else that is known about the case and the evidence.
DNA Shows:
1983 Forensic Report Contains Crucial BLOOD TYPE ERROR
Something that came to light in the course of the DNA
testing is that blood from a piece of tissue paper found on the victim's couch belonged to the victim, whose blood type was
'O'. This means that a key part of Mark T. Grant's November 6, 1983 forensic report is factually incorrect with regard to blood type. Further, he stated in his
testimony at the May 22, 1989 hearing, that this blood matched LaGuer's Type B blood.
New DNA tests indicate that the blood
on tissues found at a Leominster rape scene 19 years ago belongs to the victim and not Benjamin LaGuer, who is serving a life
sentence for the crime.... For many years John Conte, the Worcester County district attorney, has
insisted that the blood on the tissues belonged to LaGuer. Parole boards and appellate judges have kept LaGuer in prison partly
because of that assertion. In 1991 the state Supreme Judicial Supreme Court denied LaGuer's appeal for a new trial partly
because ''the defendant's ... blood type was the same as that found on tissues at the rape scene,'' Justices Paul Liacos,
Herbert Wilkins, Joseph Nolan, Francis O'Conner, and John Greaney concluded. (click for full article)
New Research on
DNA ERROR RATES
William C. Thompson
New research by people like Prof. William Thompson shows
that the chances of error in DNA testing due to error, contamination and fraud are orders of magnitude higher
than the chances of a random match. This research shows that a DNA test cannot be viewed in isolation. In evaluating the conclusions drawn by Forensic Science
Associates it is also important to understand that FSA had absolutely no knowledge about the crime and the history of
the evidence. This is best illustrated by the factually incorrect assertion in the March 21, 2002 FSA report that LaGuer was
convicted of murder. In fact the victim died of natural causes 16 years after the crime.
from page 9 of the FSA March 21, 2002 report
click to enlarge
Jose O. Gomez
Among the questions that must still be answered, and which
a jury deserves to weigh in evaluating the DNA results are:
Why did police seize socks from LaGuer's apartment and then lie about it?
Why was "Benjie's underwear" in Mark T. Grant's lab? And why was he testing
the "interior crotch" of a garment with no seeming relevance to the crime?
Why did Mark T. Grant report as "Type B" blood that DNA testing shows belonged
to the victim who was "Type O"?
Why did the evidence from the case contain three (3) pairs of underwear when
it left the Leominster Police on 5/17/89 and only two (2) pairs of underwear when it appeared in court on 5/22/89? Why was
the inventory that shows this withheld from LaGuer for 12 years?
Why was an exculpatory fingerprint report prepared within hours of the crime withheld from LaGuer for more than 18 years? And what are the chances that the fingerprints
found at the crime scene belong to Jose Orlando Gomez?
February 2004:
DNA EXPERT SUPPORTS CONTAMINATION THEORY
"The small amount of genetic material
recovered from the evidence would be consistent with contamination [molecular biologist Tony N. Frudakis] said."
Freelance reporter Eric Goldscheider, who edits this web site, together with Boston television reporter
Dan Rea met with Mark T. Grant in October 2002. To follow up Goldscheider
sent Grant this letter by return receipt mail. Grant declined to answer the specific questions it poses.
)
