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For months, Frank Bowen's daughters complained of strange noises and odd happenings in their Pepperell, Massachusetts home. Frank was sure it was just their imaginations, until an intruder took the entire family hostage one night in December of 1986. When the suspect was released on bail, he was freed to commit even more crimes, eventually escalating to murder.
I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Priscilla, William, and Abigail Gustafson, and the infamous story of Daniel LaPlante on Dark Down East. It was just a few minutes past 6 p.m. on December 8th, 1986, when the phone started to ring at the police station in Pepperell, Massachusetts.
At the time, the police department was made up of about 10 officers for the roughly 10,000 residents of Pepperell and the village of East Pepperell, where the most common calls were for domestic disturbances or public intoxication. Though serious violent crimes happened — no place is immune, after all — they were rare. So when the dispatcher picked up the phone, she never expected the series of events that would unfold from that very first call.
The caller told the dispatcher that a neighbor just ran to their house screaming for help, saying that her family was being held hostage. She'd escaped through the window and was able to get to the neighbor's house unharmed, but her father, sister, and friend were still trapped next door with the kidnapper.
Both Pepperell PD and Massachusetts State Police responded to 93 St. Lawrence Street, and a Pepperell officer spoke with the neighbors who called in the report and 14-year-old Tina Bowen. Tina was visibly upset and crying as she told the officer what happened.
She explained that when she and her father, Frank Bowen, and her sister Karen and friend Kathleen walked inside their home around 5.30 that night, the house wasn't at all the way they'd left it. Here's retired Pepperell Police Lieutenant Thomas Lane, who was on the scene that night.
They had arrived home to find that the radios were blaring in the house, all the lights were on, the TVs were on, all of them, and blaring with sound. Alarmed by all of it, Frank Bowen started walking from room to room, trying to figure out what was going on. He noticed someone had used the toilet in their basement, and several items were out of place.
Moving into the front of the house, Frank opened a closet to a shocking sight. He locked eyes with an intruder, wielding a hatchet in one hand and a steel wrench in the other. The man was wearing a furry coat and had his face painted with hair sticking straight up in spikes. The intruder calmly instructed Frank to get the girls and go into a bedroom. Frank yelled for the girls and stayed between them and the man as they were ushered down the hallway.
Before the intruder could follow the Bowens into the bedroom, Frank slammed the door and wedged it shut. He was trying to make a plan, trying to figure out how to save the children and himself from the intruder's unknown plot, trying to calm the girls down, when Tina became so upset she hoisted open the bedroom window and jumped out of it, despite her father's desperate pleas against it.
That high-risk but brave escape is what brought Lieutenant Thomas Lane and the rest of the responding officers to the scene, and it's likely what saved all of their lives that night. Sitting next door at the neighbor's house with police now, Tina gave them two phone numbers for her house and officers tried them both, but the calls just kept ringing and ringing and ringing without answer.
So, officers began to surround the Bowen home, planning their next steps to rescue the hostages inside. Moments later, officers noticed a flicker of light and movement in a second-floor bedroom. They could make out several silhouettes in the room, and then Frank Bowen stepped up to the window, hollering for police to come help. Frank told officers that the intruder was either somewhere else in the house or had fled the scene.
He lowered the two girls out of the window to officers waiting below and then jumped out himself. The family reunited with Tina at the neighbor's house as police began to file in to the Bowen home. Lieutenant Lane joined the other law enforcement officers as they methodically searched each room for the intruder.
Searched repeatedly, repeatedly. Searched the home, searched the woods, searched the yards, searched the roads. There was no sign of the intruder whatsoever. Whoever kidnapped and terrorized the Bowens that night had managed to escape right under the noses of law enforcement. The sliding door leading to the back deck was slightly ajar, and police recovered a hatchet and wrench on the ground near the porch steps.
Police cleared the house, but the Bowens were advised to vacate their home as the investigation began. Unfortunately, the investigation didn't have much to go on. Frank told police that the intruder was wearing gloves, but he thought that one of the fingertips may have been missing, so investigators collected two telephones that had been ripped from the wall inside the house and planned to check them for possible prints.
State police brought in a tracking dog in hopes of trailing the suspect's escape route, but the dog was unable to identify a trail. It's possible the dog was thrown off, though, because police had given the dog the wrench and hatchet to detect a scent, and Frank Bowen said that the hatchet was his. He usually kept it on his nightstand.
Frank Bowen and the girls all described the assailant as being anywhere from 17 to 26 years old, maybe with blonde hair, maybe with dark hair, maybe with a mustache, maybe not. The face paint and spiked hairstyle obscured any defining features of his true identity.
The family didn't know who would possibly have a motive to carry out these terrifying acts against them either, but Frank had a feeling that whoever broke in and held them hostage had actually been in their home before. For about six months leading up to the hostage situation in December, the Bowen family had been experiencing some strange incidents at their home.
Some were seemingly innocuous, bumps in the night, human-shaped shadows on the wall during thunderstorms, ding-dong ditch at the front door that Frank had chalked up to a neighborhood kid pulling pranks. But then there were the truly bizarre and unexplainable events.
The girls would walk into a room and find their glass of milk empty when they'd barely taken a sip themselves. The TV changed channels without touching the dial. Food was missing. Their stuff was moved around. Again, Frank tried to dismiss it all as practical jokes or coincidence, or even the imaginings of young girls who had been through a lot in recent months.
Even Frank Bowen, the father, was repeatedly telling his daughters, no, this isn't right. You're imagining this. This is hysteria. The mother had died of cancer a year earlier before all of this took place. And he was figuring that, no, no, this is hysteria and they're just grieving as a form of grief. Then one day, Frank discovered the phone lines to their house had been cut.
He was beginning to consider the possibility that the girls weren't imagining things. Yet he couldn't begin to explain why or how it was happening. The family was on edge, even fighting amongst themselves when something happened, trying to blame someone for disappearing milk and changing channels. I don't know the complete set of circumstances that led Frank to list the house for sale, but the first ad appeared in the Boston Herald in November of 1986.
Perhaps the family had finally reached their limit with the mysterious happenings of their house, or maybe it was just time to move on. But they weren't free of it in time to avoid the face-painted intruder a month later. The circumstances of the hostage situation and Frank's belief that the intruder had been in their house messing with them for months leading up to the incident struck Lieutenant Lane as almost unbelievable.
All four parties that were involved, Mr. Bowe and his two girls, and Kathy Knapp, who had been staying with him for some time, were telling the same story.
And alarming is one part of it, but of course, the facts just seem very wild. There was at least a little bit of doubt in my mind and probably of the other officers there of, did this actually happen? I guess the best way to put it, the incident, at least described to us, did stretch the limits of credibility to some extent. In the days following the hostage situation at the Bowen home, police stepped up patrols along Lawrence Street.
Without a motive or a solid description of the suspect, though, that was the extent of it. We had very little to go on. All we could do at the time is continue to patrol that area day and night, much more than we normally would. And then, of course, two days later on the 10th, things became very real.
Not two days later, on December 10th, 1986, the Pepperell Police Dispatch received yet another call for officers to respond to 93 Lawrence Street. This time it was Frank Bowen himself calling. When Officer Steve Bazanson pulled into the driveway, he found Frank outside. He pulled up to the home, and Mr. Bowen was very, very agitated. He was pointing at one of the windows, and he was
And Steve's reaction as he approached the home was, "Oh, I know what he's going to tell me. He's going to tell me he saw a guy in the window." Officer Bazanson was somewhat incredulous as Frank told him exactly what he expected to hear: that he arrived at the house to pick up some of their belongings, and before he even went inside, he spotted the same guy who held his family hostage two days earlier standing in the front window.
Officer Bizanson approached the Bowen home to take a look around and make sure that whoever Frank saw, if he really did see someone, wasn't still lurking somewhere. According to the incident report written by Officer Bizanson, he didn't notice any signs of forced entry or clues that someone had broken in. The house was still locked up tight, and though there were some tracks in the snow, they were old and fresh flakes had fallen on top.
The officer got the keys from Frank and opened the front door to check inside for the mysterious intruder. If anything, just to assure the Bowens it was safe to enter. But as Officer Bazanson stepped into the Bowen home, any lingering doubts that what Frank had seen was real quickly dissolved. There was a knife stabbed into the wall. Climbing the stairs to the living room, the officer saw a message written in shaving cream on the furniture. "'I am in your room,' it said."
More messages were scrawled on the walls. In the dining room, large letters spelled out "I'll be back." Next to it, a picture of one of the Bowen daughters with a knife stabbed through it. There were two glasses of champagne on the counter, poured but untouched. In a downstairs room, the officer found a BB gun propped up in a closet with the barrel sticking out. Officer Besanson had seen enough.
He radioed for backup, and two more officers responded to the address to help search and photograph the house. As they shined the flashlight into the attic, beneath the basement stairs, and other likely hiding spots, they found nothing but dark, empty corners. But how was it possible that the intruder had gotten away again? Every door was locked, and there were no tracks in the snow indicating someone had fled the scene. Officer Bazanson wasn't fooled.
He told the other two, the sergeant in chief, to be quiet. He wanted to listen, use his sense of hearing. He heard nothing, but then he said, but we're missing something here. We are missing something. Officer Bazanson scanned the basement laundry room looking for anything unusual, and that's when he spotted it. There was a toilet off in the corner with a false wall behind it, built to hide the plumbing, leaving a triangle-shaped space.
It was small, but concealed. The officer approached and peered behind the wall, finding what looked like a heap of dirty clothes. He pulled back the top layer to find a person crouching in the corner. The male subject climbed out on his own and was handcuffed on the spot. When Steve brought his handcuffed prisoner outside, Mr. Bowen burst into tears.
He just broke down totally and started crying, you didn't believe me, you didn't believe me. And of course, he had to be believed now because that young intruder, that cold, calculating, very clever individual had occupied from time to time that home, that Bowen home, for a total of half a year, performing all kinds of tricks
deeds, tricks, pranks, and finally the kidnapping. And until the kidnapping, nobody had laid eyes on him ever. But now he was under arrest for kidnapping and several other charges. It was believed that the intruder had used that hiding spot before and lurked in the house terrorizing the Bowens for months. The suspect refused to tell police his name until he was booked down at the station and
He was later identified as 16-year-old Daniel LaPlante. Daniel was charged with breaking and entering a dwelling, four counts of kidnapping, four counts of armed assault in a dwelling, larceny over $100, and malicious destruction of property. I helped with a booking procedure, and instead of the usual two photos of the prisoner LaPlante, I took six.
Lieutenant Lane just had a feeling about this guy. It was a feeling that proved to be almost prophetic.
According to reporting by Kevin Cullen in the Boston Globe, because Daniel LaPlante was a juvenile, he was held in a State Department of Youth Services detention center to wait out his day in court. The investigation into his crimes against the Bowen family continued. Police determined that Daniel targeted them after going on a date with Tina Bowen. Tina wasn't interested, but Daniel apparently became obsessed with her after that.
About 10 months later, Daniel still hadn't been prosecuted. His case was transferred from juvenile court to Lowell Superior Court, and the judge decided to allow bail to be set at $10,000. Learning this, Daniel's mother got a new mortgage on their home to pull out the bail money, and Daniel was released on October 9th, 1987. He was due back in Middlesex Superior Court two months later on December 11th.
But before that day ever arrived, Daniel's release on bail would prove to be a devastating decision. On the evening of December 1st, 1987, Andrew Gustafson returned to his home on Saunders Street in Townsend, Massachusetts, to find it quiet and dark. He and his wife Priscilla had two young children, five-year-old William and seven-year-old Abigail, so quiet wasn't exactly how you'd describe their household.
Before Andrew even stepped inside, he knew something was wrong. Repeated calls to his wife and kids went unanswered. He walked from room to room, looking for his family, when there in the bedroom he found Priscilla, lying motionless on the bed. Paul Anger reports for the Boston Globe that Massachusetts State Police responded to the scene and searched the Gustafson home.
Police found Priscilla in her bedroom as Andrew said they would, lying face down on the bed with a pillowcase over her head, the victim of apparent gunshot wounds from a .22 caliber firearm. She had been sexually assaulted. Troopers searched the house for the two Gustafson children and discovered the lifeless bodies of the young boy and girl in separate bathrooms.
Both died of drowning, and Abigail also had injuries consistent with blunt trauma to the head and compression of the neck. Police collected several items of evidence at the scene, including the pillowcase placed on Priscilla's head, body fluids near one corner of the bedspread, part of a condom on the floor, a knotted brown sock, and what appeared to be several makeshift ligatures—a necktie, a sock, stockings, and pantyhose that had been tied and cut—
Outside, they found another pillow with two spent cartridges inside. As investigators began to make sense of the scene and the evidence, word of the homicides spread quickly, and the story took over the news cycle. Lieutenant Lane was at Ayer District Courthouse on the morning of December 2nd, when he heard the headline come over the radio. The first thought that crossed his mind brought him back almost a year, to that night at the
And my response to the group there was, I wonder what Daniel LaPlante is doing lately. As state and local police began their investigation at the Gustafson home, Daniel LaPlante's name was on their minds too. Within the first 24 hours of the case, evidence had led investigators right to Daniel LaPlante's door. Literally.
According to court records, Townsend Police Chief William May was searching the perimeter of the Gustafson home when he noticed several footprints in a flowerbed. He traced the path of the prints, which led to a spot on the front of the house where a nameplate sign was clearly missing. The chief called headquarters to request tracking dogs at the residence to further track the footprints. It was around 1 a.m. on December 2nd when trooper Robert Hippler arrived with his German shepherd, named Mike.
Despite the late hour, Mike was ready to work. The trooper gave Mike the pillow that was found outside the home with the spent casings inside, and as soon as the dog caught a scent, he was off running. Jogging behind the pup to keep pace, officers followed Mike's path until they reached a creek. It was a dead end for the moment, but they resolved to try again when daylight was on their side.
That afternoon, a second tracking dog named Spike also quickly caught a scent from evidence at the Gustafson home and took off into the woods with officers at his tail. This time, the dog led them to a pile of clothing and other items discarded on the ground. There was a blue and white flannel shirt wrapped around a pair of soaking wet work gloves and a nameplate bearing the Gustafson name, the one that the chief suspected had been pulled off the front of their house.
But the dog didn't stop at this new evidence. Spike identified a new scent to follow from the flannel shirk and again was off running with his nose to the ground. The troopers followed dutifully behind, and when the dog's gait slowed, Spike and his handlers were standing about three or four feet from the home of Daniel LaPlante.
The same day that dogs followed a scent from the Gustafson home to Daniel's house, that Wednesday, December 2nd, 1987, State Police Trooper Stephen Matthews located Daniel LaPlante at the Townsend Library where he was being tutored. Paul Langer reports for the Boston Globe that Daniel's voice was calm and measured as he told Trooper Matthews that he'd been home watching music videos on MTV all afternoon on December 1st, the day of the murders.
The only time he left the TV was when he thought about cutting some wood out on his family's property and went to the shed for a chainsaw, but it was locked, so he changed his mind and went back inside. Later that evening, he went to his niece's birthday party with his mom, but other than that, he was home.
The trooper asked Daniel what he knew about the Gustafson murders, and he said not much, but his stepfather had been watching the news with a story about the ongoing investigation, and they'd pulled out a map to find Saunders Road together. It was about a quarter mile through the woods to their house on Elm Street. When asked if he saw or heard anything the day before, Daniel responded that he thought he heard a door slam and some yelling around 3 p.m., but that was it.
The more questions Matthews asked, the more nervous Daniel seemed to become. Although he managed to keep his voice calm, the trooper said he saw a noticeable line of sweat developing on Daniel's upper lip. The trooper later described Daniel as jumpy and edgy. Matthews left the library but later returned to ask a few more questions. By then, Daniel had been picked up by his mother, so Trooper Matthews headed to Elm Street to talk to Daniel at home.
Daniel's mother, Elaine, answered the front door and told the trooper that Daniel wasn't going anywhere and no one was going to talk to him without an attorney present. State police tried one more time to speak with Daniel on the night of December 2nd. Trooper Matthews showed up at the LaPlante residence around 7.30 p.m. But as the officer pulled up, Daniel jumped off the back porch of his house and fled into the woods.
With their suspect on the run, police obtained a search warrant for the home of Daniel LaPlante, and what they found led to formal charges against the 17-year-old boy. The murder weapon in Priscilla Gustafson's death, a .22 caliber revolver, was believed to have been stolen during a break-in nearby on October 14th.
LaPlante had been a suspect in the case, and during the search of his home, police recovered bullet casings that matched the stolen gun, as well as the bullets used to kill Priscilla Gustafson and additional bullet casings found in the pillow outside the Gustafson home. And a few weeks prior to the murders, the Gustafsons had also reported a break-in at their home.
According to court records, on November 16th, 1987, someone stole a number of items, including a cordless telephone, two TV cable boxes, a remote control, and some collectible coins. When police searched Daniel's home as part of the homicide investigation, they found a cordless phone and a cable box hidden in a tool cabinet. Both matched the items stolen from the Gustafsons' home.
Investigators had uncovered a ton of evidence already. The search dogs led police to Daniel's doorstep. His home was in close proximity to the scene of the murders. The bullets and all the other things found at his house. And now, Daniel was on the run. It showed consciousness of guilt, a concept that would factor heavily into the case and Lieutenant Lane's testimony down the road. An innocent person doesn't run.
With that, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Daniel LaPlante on three counts of first-degree murder. Daniel LaPlante's flight from his home triggered one of the biggest manhunts ever seen in the area at that time. By now, almost everyone knew that a suspected killer was on the loose, and they were appropriately on edge.
Police set up a command center in Townsend and were fielding reports left and right about suspicious-looking people lurking around town and in the woods behind homes. Some of those reports were coming in from the next town over, in Pepperell. Lieutenant Lane decided to organize a search within Pepperell, reasoning that if Daniel LaPlante was going to hide out somewhere, it would be in a location he knew well.
When I arrived at the station, I put my bulletproof vest on first and last time, and I led the manhunt in Pepperell. The command center for the search for LaPlante was centered in Townsend.
I reasoned that with the command center and the Townsend and state police officers there, the last place he'd want to be would be Townsend. And I said, where would he head? Well, he had to head to the previously very quiet area of Western Pepperell and the area of Lawrence Street and the Bowen home.
Leaning on experience from a case back in the 70s when an armed intruder fled into the woods, Lt. Lane knew the best way to keep a suspect confined to one area was by constantly circling it with as many vehicles were available. So that's what they did. Based on reported sightings of Daniel around town, Lt. Lane believed he was somewhere within a large rectangular wooded area bordered by four roads. Around and around they went.
The Townsend police and state police were somewhat skeptical that we actually were on the track of the real LaPlante. And I can't blame them, but we were fairly sure that we were on the right track. So as we're circling that large area, I said to myself, we only have three cars, so I don't want to set a search pattern. So I said, I have to turn around and start going in a clockwise manner around that rectangular area
Lieutenant Lane pulled into the driveway of 124 Jewett Street in Pepperell to reverse directions around the search perimeter. It was just plain luck. That's it. Just plain luck that had me pull into that driveway. It was a random decision that turned out to be crucial and perhaps even life-saving.
The resident of the home, Lynn McGovern, was standing in the driveway trying to flag Lieutenant Lane down as he turned his cruiser around. She said, I understand what's going on here. She said, nothing's wrong that I can see, but I'm just getting back into my house. I've been gone for a little bit. Can you come in with me? And I said, yes, yes, I would. Lieutenant Lane was transparent about how he felt in that moment.
I will admit that I was going to do it. You don't turn down that request. But I was a little bit annoyed. I said, oh, this is simply an allay the fears trip that may hamper our search and final arrest of Daniel LaPlante. But
I had my accompanying officer, Officer Ken Beers, stay in the cruiser to make sure he stayed in radio contact with everybody else. And I walked into the McGovern home with Mrs. McGovern and, again, not seeing any possible signs of a forced entry or anything like that.
As we walked into the home, things really happened fast. And I mean damn fast. I walked into the kitchen. You're talking maybe five seconds. Then I heard a loud thump in the upstairs. And it was loud.
I pulled my sidearm and climbed the stairs quickly. When I got to the top, I found that the door to the top landing was shut. But right in front of that door was a 16-gauge bolt-action shotgun. When I yelled down to Mrs. McGovern about the shotgun, do you own a shotgun? She started screaming.
Lieutenant Lane called for the officer in the cruiser to get into the house fast, and then he radioed for multi-backup. He didn't see who dropped the McGovern's shotgun at the top of the stairs. He didn't know for sure that it was Daniel, but his intuition hadn't failed him yet. We had surrounded the house at that point, but once again, Daniel, slippery, clever, decided to bail out that top window of the house and flee into the woods.
Additional officers from both local and state police were on their way to Pepperell at that point. Everything came to reality that, yeah, we were on the heels of the killer. After fleeing the McGovern home, another resident, Jonathan Lang, reported that Daniel had tried to get him to open the door to his house, but Jonathan refused and Daniel moved on. Other calls came in too, and the officers followed up on each one leading into the evening.
Lieutenant Lane had responded to a report of a suspicious person on Elm Street, and while he was speaking with a few of the residents about what they saw, the sound of screams cut through the night. It was coming from the direction of Edward Gologly's home. Lieutenant Lane got to the house as fast as he could. I got out of the car, and I yelled inside, Ed, is he in there? And Ed Gologly yelled back out, no, but get in here quick. Never forget that.
Ed's niece, Pamela Makula, was sitting inside completely distraught, but she calmed quickly, understanding the importance of what she was about to say. She told Lieutenant Lane that she arrived home to find Daniel LaPlante inside her house with a gun. Daniel told Pamela that he needed to get out of town and she was going to give him a ride. He told her that he was
needed somebody to drive him to Fitchburg because he only had a learner's permit. Now this is a triple murderer talking about being concerned about being stopped by the police for a very minor, forgive the laughter. It was a dose of comedic relief in what was an incredibly tense and terrifying situation. But Pamela told Daniel she'd drive him wherever he wanted to go.
She grabbed the keys to the bright orange Volkswagen van sitting out in the yard with two for sale signs in the windows and put the keys in the ignition. As they drove off, Pamela actually had no intention of bringing Daniel all the way to Fitchburg. She had a plan. And she drove up Elm Street from her home and saw her uncle, Ed Gologly, talking to somebody in a car. I believe that was me.
She had bailed out of the car at the town hall at the end of Elm Street, feeling that was her only shot at getting away and probably getting away alive. And she was quickly picked up by a passerby and brought maybe the hundred yards to Edgar Oakley's home. Lieutenant Lane put out an APB for the orange car and driver, Daniel LaPlante, who was headed east after Pamela escaped the vehicle.
Other than a circus clown car, the vehicle she was driving and LaPlante was going to be in was just very discernible. You would pick it out of a hundred cars quickly. Soon, the manhunt effort had swelled to 50 or 60 police officers. And with sightings of that unmissable orange car, they had Daniel confined to a lumberyard in the town of Ayer.
Suddenly, an officer saw a head pop out of a dumpster and quickly disappear. It was Daniel. He tried to flee for the last time, jumping out of the dumpster and attempting to hide beneath it, but police had him surrounded. The manhunt was finally over. Daniel was taken into custody and booked that night.
Unfortunately, he still had in his possession the handgun he had stole from the McGovern home, and he had that hidden in his underwear. And that was never detected until he did a strip search at the barracks. Daniel also had a bullet in his sneaker. Thankfully, Daniel wasn't able to use the gun or the bullet, and that was the last surprise the accused triple murderer had for law enforcement that night.
The day after his capture, on December 4th, 1987, Daniel pleaded not guilty to all three counts of first-degree murder. This time, Daniel would not be allowed bail. He was ordered to undergo 20 days of psychiatric evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital. The investigation continued with Daniel in custody.
Court records show that investigators found semen as well as a pubic hair on the bedding underneath Priscilla Gustafson that did not match the victim or her husband. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Riley requested hair, blood, and saliva samples from Daniel for comparison to the biological evidence at the scene. When they were finally obtained, the samples from Daniel showed that he was a Type A secretor.
A type A secretor has type A blood, which is characterized by A antigens on your red blood cells, and you secrete these A antigens into your bodily fluids. The semen stain on the bedding was also from a type A secretor. The physical evidence didn't stop there.
Lab analysis found that fibers taken from that flannel shirt found in the woods by the search dog matched fibers on the shirt Daniel was wearing on the day of the murders, as well as fibers found on socks in his bedroom, the belt found with the murder weapon, and in three different places at the scene of the murders. Shoe prints outside of the Gustafson home matched the sneakers Daniel was wearing when he was caught and arrested.
Later, analysis also found that a strand of hair on one of Daniel's socks belonged to Abigail Gustafson. The case against Daniel just kept getting stronger. Not least of all was the fact that he behaved in a way that seemed guilty. That whole thing about consciousness of guilt that I mentioned earlier. An innocent man doesn't flee from the police without
And during that flight, doesn't break into a home, steal three firearms, or attempt to kidnap and kill a woman or a police lieutenant, meaning me, doesn't kidnap a woman at gunpoint and force her to drive him from the scene. Even in the face of all this evidence, Daniel LaPlante maintained his innocence, and his family thought police had the wrong guy too.
They believed that investigators were under pressure to catch someone for the tragic murders of the mother and her children, and so Daniel became the scapegoat without a thorough investigation. They reasoned that he only ran because he was nervous about his upcoming court date for the Bowen family case. Remember, he had a hearing scheduled for that on December 11th.
According to reporting by Jim Gomez for the Boston Globe, Daniel's defense attorney Robert Casey claimed someone he believed to be a reliable source called his office and said that the murders may have been committed by more than one person. He made a public appeal to those quote certain individuals to come forward and show themselves to help clear Daniel's name.
He also argued that investigators couldn't come up with a motive for Daniel to kill the mother and her two young children. Plus, Daniel claimed to have an alibi for the afternoon of the murders, if you can even call it that. He had claimed to be watching music videos all day. Police actually used that flimsy alibi to try and suss out a motive for Daniel to carry out the murders.
Investigators obtained copies of the music videos played during the time segment Daniel claimed to be watching TV to see if they'd yield any hints as to why he would have killed the Gustafsons. Police were reportedly looking for any signs or themes of quote-unquote ritualistic domination or violence of any kind that Daniel may have acted out, though it's unclear to me if they ever learned anything of value from the music videos.
And anyway, it's not required to prove motive in a criminal case. Motive or not, one last piece to the puzzle was located on April 7th, 1988. Daniel's brother, Stephen LaPlante, and another man opened the glove compartment of a car sitting on the LaPlante property to find a loaded .22 caliber semi-automatic revolver, the same type of firearm used to kill Priscilla Gustafson.
Daniel was finally indicted on 28 different counts, including three charges for the murders of Priscilla, William, and Abigail Gustafson, and 10 charges related to the December 1986 kidnapping and terrorizing of the Bowen family.
Other charges included receiving stolen goods, breaking and entering, assault with a dangerous weapon, a firearm violation, kidnapping, larceny of a motor vehicle, and others stemming from the manhunt and chase that resulted in his arrest.
In September of 1988, following a motion by Daniel's defense, a judge ruled that Daniel would have to face the four murder charges first before he could be tried for anything else, including his terrorizing of the Bowen family and the crimes committed while attempting to flee during the December 1987 manhunt.
When the trial of Daniel LaPlante finally began in October of 1988, the accused killer was 18 years old, a legal adult, and he was tried as one too. The prosecution laid out their case against accused killer Daniel LaPlante for a jury that had been paneled outside of Middlesex County for fear that press coverage surrounding the case would have impacted the local jury pool.
Through witness and expert testimony, the assistant district attorney introduced the long list of evidence against Daniel. Daniel's attorneys made a surprising move just before it was their opportunity to present their defense. According to Paul Langer's reporting for the Boston Globe, the defense attorney asked the judge to ask the jury to consider whether Daniel LaPlante was insane and therefore could be found not guilty.
Apparently, there was some legal doctrine that said if the evidence suggested the defendant was insane, then the jury could consider it and therefore issue a not guilty verdict, which would give the defendant an opportunity to be released pending psychiatric evaluation. The judge denied this request and did not instruct the jury either way as to the sanity of the defendant.
After almost two weeks of testimony and 50-plus witnesses for the prosecution, the defense didn't call a single witness of their own, nor did Daniel testify in his own defense. In closing arguments, Daniel's attorney suggested that there were other suspects, possibly Daniel's own brother or the family friend who was with him when they found the murder weapon. And Daniel was just the easiest scapegoat.
He challenged the scientific evidence in the case, saying that it had a quote-unquote aura of believability, but it didn't prove definitively that Daniel was the one who did it. The case was finally turned over to the jury for deliberation on October 25th, 1988. They reached a verdict the very next day. Daniel J. LaPlante, guilty on all counts.
Within minutes of the verdict, Judge Robert A. Barton handed down Daniel's sentence.
Judge Barton said, quote, There are some who would say that you should receive the same sentence that you imposed on the Gustafson family, that is, death by ligature or hanging. But we have no death penalty in Massachusetts. Accordingly, the sentence to be imposed is one that intends you to spend the rest of your life behind bars with no parole, no commutation, and no furloughs. That is, three consecutive life sentences. End quote.
Daniel appealed, as is automatic in first-degree murder cases, but it was denied in 1993. He remains behind bars today, but he has hopes of getting out. Laura Cromaldi reports for the Boston Globe that since Daniel was convicted, a Supreme Judicial Court decision banned life without parole sentences for juveniles because their brains weren't fully developed when they committed their crimes.
This ruling made certain convicted killers eligible for parole after 15 years, but since Daniel was sentenced to three consecutive life terms, he had to serve 45 years before asking for release. However, Daniel could petition a judge to consider concurrent life terms, which would have made him eligible for parole in 2017.
However, following testimony, which included evaluation by a psychiatrist who determined brain development and age had no impact on Daniel's crimes, and he showed no remorse for killing the mother and her children, a judge ruled that Daniel did have to serve the full 45 years before parole would even be considered. He appealed again in 2019 with the same result. But parole is still on the table.
Daniel can petition for parole when he is 62 years old, around the year 2033. That's one of the reasons why retired Lieutenant Tom Lane wants people to know what Daniel did. I don't know what possessed him, but I think it's still there. So it's to keep him in prison. That's why I'm doing this, that he should die in prison. The Gustafsons were a well-known and beloved family.
Priscilla was the daughter of two late local reverends. She taught preschool at the Townsend Cooperative Play School in the basement of the First Congregational Church. Abigail and William were sweet, innocent young children. Together with Andrew, they were the perfect family. And soon they would be the Gustafson party of five. Priscilla was just a few weeks pregnant when she was killed.
The last time Andrew saw his wife and kids was on the morning of their deaths. He hugged and kissed them all goodbye and headed off to work. Andrew said in his testimony that it should have been a happy day, one of celebration. He'd just closed a big real estate deal for his law firm and he wanted to take Priscilla out on a date. He never got that chance. Abigail was looking forward to her very first sleepover the next week. She never got that chance.
That detail, out of so many horrible ones, just wrecked me. As for the Bowen family, they never received any form of justice following the months of terror and the kidnapping they survived at the hands of, allegedly, Daniel LaPlante. I say allegedly because he was never tried on those or any other charges after his triple murder conviction.
Frank Bowen told the Lowell's son that what Daniel put them through left him financially broke, the whole family emotionally disturbed, and they struggled to put their lives together. Frank, Tina, Karen, Kathy, everyone else who faced Daniel LaPlante while he was on the run, they deserved better from the justice system for all they endured. But justice can never heal everything.
It certainly has not fixed the loss and grief that the surviving Gustafson family members continue to feel to this day. Priscilla's sister, Beth Williams, told Paul Langer of the Boston Globe, quote, There can be no justice. The only justice would have been if it had never happened. Those were four people that were killed, end quote. Priscilla's sisters continued to show up for hearings when Daniel tried to petition for release, and they'll keep showing up,
In 2019, Beth told John Element of the Boston Globe, quote, End quote.
Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.
Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
