Joseph Lee Druce has been convicted of two first-degree murders in Massachusetts. The first, in 1988, was committed under the name he was born with, Darrin Smiledge. He beat and bound George Rollo, a 51-year-old Gloucester man who had picked him up, and strangled him in a parking lot in Beverly. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. On August 23, 2003, while serving that sentence, he followed John Geoghan, a 68-year-old former priest, into his cell in a protective custody unit at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, jammed the door and strangled him.
Geoghan was not an ordinary prisoner. His case had set off the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston and beyond, and he had been convicted in 2002 of indecently assaulting a 10-year-old boy. His death inside a maximum-security prison led to a state investigation, a governor's commission on the whole Department of Correction and the removal of the correction commissioner. Druce said he had killed Geoghan to protect children. Prosecutors said he had planned it for weeks to raise his own standing. A Worcester jury rejected his insanity defense in January 2006, and the state's highest court upheld both of his murder convictions.
Druce was born Darrin Smiledge in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1965, the son of a sheet metal worker, Dana Smiledge, the Boston Globe reported in 2003. He grew up on the North Shore and Cape Ann, living as a child in Danvers and Salem.
His problems began early. The Supreme Judicial Court, summarizing the 2006 trial evidence, recorded that at about 18 months old he banged his head against a window, and that by the age of six he had been prescribed Thorazine and Ritalin. Court records cited by the Globe said he received psychiatric treatment from about the age of five and took medication until his mid-teens. He was placed in special education, attended the Lakeside School in Peabody, a school for children with special needs, according to The Salem News, and was later placed in a residential program and at Danvers State Hospital. Psychiatric testimony from his 1989 trial, as reported by the Globe, described a boy obsessed with sex and violent fantasies; his mother blamed his misbehavior on his hatred of her.
The 2009 opinion records that his father abused both him and his mother and allowed him to drink as a child, and that he used illegal drugs as a teenager. Testifying in 2006, Druce described a childhood marked by beatings from his father, who also beat his mother, the Associated Press reported.
Druce also said he was sexually abused as a boy. In 2003 an investigator for his defense said three adult men had abused him, starting at about age 8, among them a neighbor and a man who held a supervisory role at the family's church but was not a priest. At his 2006 trial Druce testified that he had been physically and sexually abused at a residential school for troubled children. The Supreme Judicial Court recorded that in his early teens he was sexually abused by a man at least ten years older. None of these men has been publicly named, and no charge against any of them has been reported.
He left school after the 10th grade, became addicted to drugs as a teenager and worked as a mechanic and truck driver, the Globe reported. Soon after leaving school he began collecting criminal charges, more than two dozen in all, including drug possession, larceny and forgery.
George J. Rollo was 51 and lived in Gloucester, where he drove a bus for the elderly. No obituary, family statement or description of the man himself was reported. What it does show is that, at the end of May 1988, he stopped for two young men who were hitchhiking.
The Supreme Judicial Court's 1994 opinion sets out the facts as the jury heard them. Rollo drove Smiledge and his companion to Brace's Cove in Gloucester. The companion testified that he saw Rollo touch Smiledge in the groin. Smiledge then beat Rollo severely, tied his hands and feet and put him in the trunk of his own car. The Globe, drawing on trial testimony, reported that the two young men stopped to buy beer before Smiledge drove to a deserted parking lot near the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly. There, the prosecutor said, Smiledge strangled Rollo with a rope. The two men threw his body down an embankment, covered it with branches and fled.
Accounts of the motive have differed. Smiledge's position at trial was that Rollo had made a sexual advance. The Globe reported in 2003 that he had killed a man he believed was gay, and quoted a police officer who described the killing as a "gay bashing." Druce's father told the Globe that his son had long been hostile to gay people, Black people and Jewish people. In 2003 Druce, through his lawyer, denied being homophobic.
The case was solved because the companion talked. He called his girlfriend from a public telephone and told her about the killing. On June 1, 1988, after spending the morning together, the two went to the Gloucester police and reported that he had witnessed a murder. He led officers to the body, and Smiledge was arrested. The Salem News later reported that it was Beverly police who made the arrest after the body was found near the theater.
The companion was granted immunity from prosecution for the murder in exchange for his cooperation and testimony. An Essex County grand jury indicted Smiledge for murder on November 30, 1988.
The case was tried in Essex Superior Court before Judge John P. Forte. The trial lasted nine days and was under way in December 1989. Smiledge's lawyer was Martin C. Gideonse. The prosecution's case rested heavily on the immunized companion, whose criminal record reached the defense only during the trial.
Smiledge did not deny the killing. His defense was that he was not criminally responsible. A defense expert testified that he suffered from a mental disease "characterized by hyperactive behavior and the inability to focus his attention or to control his impulses." Testimony showed he had been prescribed psychoactive drugs from about age 5 or 6 into his mid-teens, the Globe later reported, though no evidence of sexual abuse was presented at that trial. At one point the prosecutor asked the defense expert whether he found it surprising that Smiledge could "sit quietly and to pay attention through nine days of trial."
The jury rejected the defense and convicted him of first-degree murder. The mandatory sentence was life in prison without the possibility of parole. In a 1989 interview noted in a prison psychiatrist's records, he said he expected to "go to Satan" and declared: "I'll die before I serve a life sentence!"
With a new lawyer, Smiledge appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court. He argued that the late disclosure of the companion's record had prejudiced him, that he had been wrongly barred from questioning the girlfriend about a restraining order, that the prosecutor's question about his courtroom demeanor violated his right not to testify, that a police lieutenant and the prosecutor had vouched for the companion, and that the jury instructions were flawed. He also asked the court to use its special power of review in first-degree murder cases to reduce the verdict to second-degree murder.
On December 14, 1994, in an opinion by Justice Francis Lynch, the court rejected every argument. It found that his lawyer had cross-examined the companion thoroughly, that jurors may consider a defendant's demeanor when his sanity is in issue, and that the mental-disease evidence had been fully presented to a properly instructed jury. The conviction was affirmed in Commonwealth v. Smiledge, 419 Mass. 156 (1994).
In prison, Smiledge rebuilt his identity. In 1999 he formally applied to change his name to Joseph Lee Druce, writing on the form that safety and enemies were the reason. The Globe described him in 2003 as an admitted neo-Nazi; The Advocate called him a reputed member of the Aryan Nation.
He also sent threats through the mail. The Supreme Judicial Court recorded that he was sentenced to four years in the disciplinary unit at Cedar Junction, the state prison in Walpole, after mailing a realistic-looking letter bomb to the Attorney General's office. In 2002, the Globe reported, he pleaded guilty to mailing anthrax hoax letters to 39 lawyers around the country who had Jewish-sounding names.
In a May 2001 letter, Druce offered information on the unsolved killings of two girls from central Massachusetts, Molly Bish and Holly Piirainen, in exchange for the commutation of his life sentence. The Worcester district attorney, John J. Conte, said investigators found the offer not credible.
His conduct in prison included repeated self-harm. The 2009 opinion lists overdoses of medication, cutting his arms and swallowing foreign objects, some of which had to be removed surgically. In 2000 he founded what he called the Church of the Chosen Ones, designed a crest, obtained a trademark and copyright, and wrote his own Bible. He fantasized, the court recorded, that the Pope would make him "Saint Joseph."
John J. Geoghan grew up in West Roxbury, Boston. As a 19-year-old seminarian he was seen by his superiors as immature and emotionally distant, and they doubted he would be ordained; his uncle, Monsignor Mark H. Keohane, smoothed the way, the Globe's Thomas Farragher wrote in 2003. Geoghan served in Boston-area parishes for decades, including St. Paul's Church in Hingham from 1967 to 1974 and St. Andrew's Church in Jamaica Plain in 1974. Complaints that he abused children reached his superiors repeatedly. He was sent to treatment centers, where he was classified a pedophile three times, and each time he was returned to parish work. In 1998 Cardinal Bernard Law announced that he had been defrocked, with the approval of Pope John Paul II.
By the time of his death, Geoghan had been accused in civil lawsuits of molesting nearly 150 children, mostly boys, over three decades. The Archdiocese of Boston's handling of those allegations, revealed in court records, helped set off the worldwide clergy abuse scandal and led to Cardinal Law's resignation. In 2002 the archdiocese paid $10 million to settle with 86 of his accusers, the Associated Press reported. Most of the allegations could not be prosecuted because too much time had passed. In January 2002 a Middlesex County jury convicted Geoghan of indecent assault and battery on a 10-year-old boy at a public swimming pool. Judge Sandra Hamlin sentenced him to 9 to 10 years. Another criminal case against him was pending in Suffolk County when he died.
The Middlesex case was the only one against him to go to trial. He was 68, frail and slow-moving by 2003, and his sister, Catherine, spoke for him after his death. His history explains why he was in prison and why he became a target. It does nothing to lessen the wrong done to him.
Geoghan was sent to MCI-Concord after his sentencing in February 2002 and held in its protective custody unit. His lawyers and family said he complained repeatedly that a small number of guards abused him: that they called him "Satan" and "Lucifer," fouled his cell, posted a newspaper clipping about his crime and body-checked him on his way back from the visiting room. He was cited for 12 disciplinary infractions at Concord, the Globe reported, among them discipline for lying after he complained. The Department of Correction said he was reclassified as a maximum-security risk because of serious offenses at Concord, including lying, insolence and tampering with a heating appliance. In March 2003 a classification board voted to keep him at Concord, but higher officials overrode the decision, and in April 2003 he was moved to the new protective custody unit at Souza-Baranowski, the state's maximum-security prison in Shirley.
Druce had also been moved to Shirley in 2003 after telling officials he had enemies at Walpole. The unit, which opened that year, held about two dozen men who needed protection from the general population. Many were young men serving long sentences for violent crimes. "You have inmates with very serious histories of assault in with people who are very vulnerable," a lawyer for Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, James Pingeon, told the Globe. On August 1, 2003, Druce exchanged punches with another inmate in the unit. He was held in isolation from August 6 to 21 and returned to the unit two days before the killing. A department spokeswoman said the fight had not risen "to the level of extra concern."
There had been a warning. In June 2003, the Globe reported, Druce asked a fellow prisoner to pretend to be his hostage; the prisoner refused and warned security staff that Druce might target Geoghan. That prisoner's lawyers said the concern was dismissed.
On Saturday, August 23, 2003, shortly before noon, the cell doors in the unit opened electronically so the men could return their lunch trays to a common area. District Attorney Conte put the time at 11:48 a.m.; the Supreme Judicial Court said about 11:53. The inmates had a few minutes to go back to their cells. Only one of the two officers assigned to the unit was there; accounts at the time said the other was helping a nurse give out medication or was assigned elsewhere for lunch.
Druce slipped into Geoghan's cell just before the doors closed, carrying items he had hidden on his body. Conte said he got in by claiming he wanted to trade coffee. He jammed the door so that it could not be opened from outside, using a book and nail clippers, and calmed Geoghan by telling him the restraint was part of a staged hostage-taking meant to get Druce transferred. He tied Geoghan's hands behind his back, threw him to the floor and strangled him with a ligature of stretched socks, tightened with a shoe. He also jumped onto Geoghan's chest. According to Druce's own statement, as the Supreme Judicial Court recounted it, Geoghan's last words were "It doesn't have to happen like this," and Druce replied, "Your days are over. No more children for you, pal."
Another inmate saw what was happening and alerted the officer, who could not open the door and radioed for help. Several officers pulled at the door until they forced it open with tools. Accounts of the time differ. Conte said seven or eight minutes passed between Druce entering and the door being pried open, while officials cited by the Associated Press during the trial estimated that Druce was inside about four minutes before guards found him and that it took about nine more minutes to get him out. One officer injured his arm in the effort. Druce told them it was over and that "it was nothing against the officers," and he was pulled out face first and handcuffed. A nurse could not revive Geoghan. He was taken to a hospital in Leominster and pronounced dead at 1:17 p.m.
The chief medical examiner, Dr. Richard Evans, found that Geoghan died of ligature strangulation, with blunt chest trauma, including fourteen broken ribs, as a contributing cause. He testified that Geoghan could have remained conscious for ninety seconds or more while he was being strangled.
Druce did not hide what he had done. In the prison's health unit he cried, shouted that he "did it" and told staff to check on "the other guy." Shortly after he was pulled from the cell he confessed to a Department of Correction investigator, Edward Hammond, who testified that Druce seemed "pleased with himself" and said he had "conned" Geoghan into believing he meant only to hold him hostage. "I killed the child molester. ... He won't touch any more kids," Hammond quoted him as saying.
In a statement to state troopers, Druce said he had decided to kill Geoghan about five weeks earlier, after overhearing him discuss abusing children. He said he chose August 23 because security would be easy to breach, that he knew he would be held accountable, and that what he had done was "honorable." He signed one written statement "Rev. Druce." While on a constant watch afterward he called out, "I did it for the kids." A psychologist who spoke to him through a crack in his cell door that day later testified that Druce denied hallucinations, said Geoghan "was planning to hurt more children" and said he wanted a trial so "the world would know."
Conte said Druce saw Geoghan as a "prize," and that he had a razor, which inmates are forbidden to have. Two state officials told the Globe that Druce had wanted to take a hostage to get himself transferred out of Shirley.
A Worcester County grand jury indicted Druce for murder on September 11, 2003. Before and after the indictment he twice swallowed objects, two small pencils on September 5 and pieces of an eyeglass stem three weeks later, and was taken to hospitals in Worcester and Boston. A letter signed by him, dated September 5, appeared in the Catholic Free Press, the newspaper of the Diocese of Worcester. In it he presented himself as a childhood victim of abuse acting for abused children, urged harsher punishment for child abusers and apologized to Geoghan's sister. Corrections officials said the letter bore his commitment number. The criminologist Jack Levin called it "an extremely manipulative" attempt to improve his image.
At his arraignment in Worcester Superior Court in September 2003, Druce pleaded not guilty. Leaving the courtroom he shouted, "Let's keep the kids safe. Hold pedophiles accountable for their actions," and other prisoners cheered. Judge John S. McCann approved funds for a psychiatric evaluation. His court-appointed lawyer, John H. LaChance of Framingham, said an insanity defense was likely.
Over the next two years Druce accused the Department of Correction of harassing him, denying him access to his lawyer and retaliating against him for exposing weak security. In April 2005 he testified that guards had beaten him after the killing and pressured him to plead guilty so that he would be transferred; prison officials denied the claims. In August 2005 the Boston Herald obtained a videotape that appeared to show Druce reenacting the killing; the department said it was an unauthorized recording made by a prison employee and that it had never had a copy. That September Druce told a judge that an officer had let him into Geoghan's cell. He had earlier told investigators he killed Geoghan "to save the children," but now said state police had coerced that statement. His own lawyer said he had no evidence that an officer let him in.
Judge Timothy S. Hillman found that the department had impeded contact between Druce and his lawyers and monitored his case materials, but he denied the motion to dismiss, ruling that the evidence did not show prejudice that could not be remedied. He also refused to suppress Druce's statements, crediting testimony that Druce had spoken spontaneously and that he was "coherent, albeit very agitated," and able to waive his rights.
The trial opened in Worcester Superior Court on January 11, 2006, before Judge Francis R. Fecteau. The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Lawrence J. Murphy, told the jury that Druce had carefully planned and carried out the killing and then bragged about it to investigators, and that he had acted after overhearing Geoghan tell his sister he planned to work with children in Costa Rica after his release. LaChance did not dispute that Druce had killed Geoghan. He said Druce was mentally ill, had been sexually abused as a child, suffered from a dissociative disorder and had acted on an "irresistible impulse," and that he had come to see himself as a protector of children who would become someone important by killing Geoghan.
A guard testified on the first day that Druce sobbed in the prison hospital unit and said "he did it for the children," and that Geoghan would offend again if released. Druce claimed that a guard had let him into the cell; the only guard on duty in the 26-inmate unit denied it on the stand. On the second day jurors watched the prison video of officers struggling to open the door and pulling Druce out, and heard Hammond describe the confession. Testimony stopped early that afternoon because Druce felt ill; LaChance said he was in pain from stitches after surgery the previous fall to remove a television cable he had swallowed.
Druce then took the stand. He described beatings by his father and abuse at a school for troubled children, and said he was driven to act after hearing Geoghan advise other inmates on molesting children and describe plans to work with children again in South America after his release. "I had seen myself as the designated individual who had to put a stop to the pedophilia in the church," he told the jury.
The defense psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, testified that Druce had severe attention deficit disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, a personality disorder with paranoid and antisocial elements and a dissociative disorder. He said Druce could plan the killing but could not control the rage behind it, and that he "lacked a substantial capacity" to tell right from wrong and to obey the law. In rebuttal, the prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Kelly, diagnosed a personality disorder marked by lack of concern for others, deceit and manipulation, and said Druce could appreciate that the killing was wrong, because he chose his victim and prepared for it; the medications he had taken, Kelly said, were for conditions that would not impair that capacity. The psychologist who had spoken to Druce on the day of the killing testified for the prosecution as well.
In closing, Murphy said Druce had spent two hours stretching socks into the cord he used and had made friendly visits to Geoghan's cell so the older man would not suspect him. "He was not a mentally ill person, raging out of control," Murphy said. "He's a calculating individual who waited for his opportunity." He urged the jurors not to let Geoghan's crimes sway them: "No one likes pedophiles, but we can't go around grabbing pedophiles and killing them."
On January 25, 2006, the jury of seven men and five women found Druce guilty of first-degree murder on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty, rejecting his insanity defense. Had he been found not guilty by reason of insanity, he would have been sent to a state mental hospital, not freed. Druce told the jurors, "It's all right. Good job," and, as they left, "No hard feelings. Have a good night."
Judge Fecteau imposed the mandatory sentence of life without parole. He told Druce that Massachusetts has no death penalty and that, if it did, Druce would not be the one to carry it out. "I was chosen, though," Druce replied, before he was told to stop speaking. He said he accepted his punishment: "Hold the pedophiles accountable, as well as myself."
The foreman, a retired college administrator, said jurors sympathized with Druce because of the failures of the system that had treated him. "Everyone agreed he has a mental illness. It's the degree that is always the question," he said. LaChance acknowledged the long odds of an insanity defense when a defendant admits the act.
Druce came to court that day with a black eye and a welt on his face, which LaChance said came from a beating the night before by a man wearing Department of Correction uniform pants. The department disputed that, saying surveillance video showed no beating and that Druce had a long history of injuring himself.
Druce's appeal went to the Supreme Judicial Court, where his lawyer argued that he was not criminally responsible and asked for a not-guilty verdict, a reduction to manslaughter or a new trial. Druce himself filed a motion asking the court not to review the conviction at all, saying his trial lawyer had "duped" him into an insanity defense, and he did not want relief that suggested he had a mental defect. He also challenged the denial of his motions to dismiss, to suppress his statements, for a mistrial and for a new trial. The mistrial motion rested on complaints that the department had medicated him inadequately, strip-searched him, searched his papers and kept him awake under watch during the trial; the court found the judge had dealt with each within his discretion.
On April 27, 2009, the court, in an opinion by Justice Roderick L. Ireland, affirmed the conviction. It noted that the evidence against him was "overwhelming," that both sides had called experts who were thoroughly cross-examined, and that there was no reason to disturb the jury's finding that he was criminally responsible. The case is Commonwealth v. Druce, 453 Mass. 686 (2009). No federal habeas petition by Druce has been reported.
In June 2007 a 10-minute prison security video of officers forcing open Geoghan's cell appeared on YouTube. A handwritten note signed "Joseph Lee Druce" sent the Boston Herald a link to it, claiming to show "the truth about officer involvement" in Geoghan's death, the Associated Press reported. The video did not show the killing. Inmates had no Internet access, and the department said it did not know how the footage got there.
Druce is serving two sentences of life without parole. The Salem News covered the Supreme Judicial Court's ruling on April 28, 2009, and that is the last public word on his case. Where he has been held since, and whether his status has changed, is not publicly known.
Geoghan's death became the subject of official inquiry within days. Governor Mitt Romney and the Secretary of Public Safety, Edward A. Flynn, formed a special panel on September 4, 2003: State Police Major Mark Delaney, the department's chief of investigations Mark Reilly, and a corrections consultant, George Camp. "We cannot escape the fact that an inmate died while in the care of the Department of Correction," Flynn said. The correction commissioner, Michael T. Maloney, was removed from office.
The panel's report, released on February 3, 2004, found that a handful of Concord guards had written "overzealous and unwarranted" disciplinary reports that led to Geoghan being classified among the state's most dangerous prisoners and sent to the unit where he died. Flynn said the reports "were more the result of personal animus" than of serious misconduct, and that Geoghan should never have been in that unit. Investigators found no evidence that guards set him up to be killed. Reporting before its release said the report would criticize Concord's managers and focus at Souza-Baranowski on a flaw in the cell-door design that let Druce trap Geoghan. The Associated Press later summarized the findings as serious failures in inmate classification, discipline and investigations, and reported that the superintendent who ordered Geoghan's transfer was removed. "The responsibility for my brother's wrongful death goes up the entire chain of command, to the highest levels," Catherine Geoghan said. The guards' union rejected the findings.
On October 17, 2003, Romney had also named a Governor's Commission on Corrections Reform, chaired by the former attorney general Scott Harshbarger, to review the entire department. Its June 30, 2004, report found that current practice did not adequately ensure the safety of inmates in protective custody and recommended changes. By February 2005 the new commissioner, Kathleen M. Dennehy, said cell doors had been redesigned and staff now shared all available information about prisoners to keep dangerous inmates away from vulnerable ones.
Geoghan's death had one more legal consequence. Because he died while the appeal of his 2002 conviction was pending, the Appeals Court, following long-standing Massachusetts practice, vacated the conviction on September 17, 2003, and ordered the indictment dismissed. Lawyers for the men who had accused him called the ruling an insult to victims and urged the Legislature to change the rule. Geoghan was buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline on August 28, 2003.
Proven and final: Druce killed George Rollo in 1988 and John Geoghan in 2003, and was convicted of first-degree murder for each. He admitted both killings; at both trials the only real issue was his criminal responsibility, and both juries rejected his insanity defense.
Druce's claim that an officer let him into the cell: he first made it in 2005. The officer denied it on the stand, Druce's own lawyer said he had no evidence for it, and no court or investigation found it proved. The 2004 investigation found no evidence that guards set Geoghan up to be killed.
Motive: Druce said he acted to protect children. Prosecutors said he planned the killing to make himself a "big shot" in prison, and Conte said he saw Geoghan as a "prize." A fellow prisoner said Druce had told him a third inmate offered money for an attack on Geoghan; there is no public record that this was proved or that anyone else was charged.
The 1988 killing: Druce said Rollo made a sexual advance, and the companion testified that he saw Rollo touch him. A police officer quoted by the Globe called the killing a gay bashing. Those accounts were never tested against Rollo's own, and the record describes Rollo only by his age, home town and job.
The abuse Druce described in his childhood was presented through his own testimony, a defense investigator and the records summarized by the Supreme Judicial Court. No one has publicly identified the men he described, and no charge against any of them is on record.
Details that vary between sources: the date of the Rollo killing (May 31, 1988, in the 1994 opinion; June 1988 in The Advocate; one 2003 Globe report says 1987); the police force that arrested him (Gloucester, where the report was made, or Beverly, per The Salem News); the time the cell doors opened (11:48 or about 11:53 a.m.); how long the cell stayed sealed (seven to eight minutes per Conte, or about four minutes before guards found him and about nine more to get him out, per officials cited by the AP); the material used as the ligature (socks, a T-shirt, a pillowcase or a bed sheet in different accounts); and the length of jury deliberations in 2006 (about six hours, or about seven hours over two days, in different Associated Press versions).
1965: Darrin Smiledge is born in Danvers, Massachusetts.
About age 5 or 6: begins psychiatric treatment and medication, which continue into his mid-teens.
May 31, 1988: George J. Rollo, 51, of Gloucester, gives Smiledge and a companion a ride; Smiledge beats and binds him and strangles him in a theater parking lot in Beverly.
June 1, 1988: the companion reports the killing to Gloucester police and leads them to the body; Smiledge is arrested.
November 30, 1988: indicted for murder in Essex County.
December 1989: convicted of first-degree murder in Essex Superior Court; life without parole.
December 14, 1994: Supreme Judicial Court affirms the conviction.
1999: applies to change his name to Joseph Lee Druce.
2000: founds his "Church of the Chosen Ones."
May 2001: offers information on two unsolved killings in return for commutation; the district attorney finds the offer not credible.
January 2002: John J. Geoghan is convicted of indecent assault and battery on a 10-year-old boy; sentenced in February to 9 to 10 years.
2002: Druce pleads guilty to mailing anthrax hoax letters to 39 lawyers.
April 2003: Geoghan is moved to the new protective custody unit at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley; Druce is moved to Shirley the same year.
June 2003: a fellow prisoner warns security staff that Druce might target Geoghan.
August 1, 2003: Druce fights another inmate; isolated August 6 to 21.
August 23, 2003: Druce traps Geoghan in his cell and strangles him; Geoghan is pronounced dead at 1:17 p.m. Druce confesses that day.
August 28, 2003: Geoghan is buried in Brookline.
September 4, 2003: Romney and Flynn form the Delaney panel.
September 11, 2003: Druce is indicted for murder in Worcester County.
September 17, 2003: the Appeals Court vacates Geoghan's conviction because he died while his appeal was pending.
September 2003: Druce pleads not guilty at his arraignment and shouts to the courtroom as he is led out.
October 17, 2003: Romney names the Governor's Commission on Corrections Reform.
February 3, 2004: the Delaney panel's report is released.
June 30, 2004: the Harshbarger commission reports.
April and September 2005: pretrial hearings on his claims against the Department of Correction.
January 11, 2006: the trial opens in Worcester Superior Court.
January 25, 2006: convicted of first-degree murder; a second life sentence without parole.
June 2007: prison video of the cell door being forced open appears online.
April 27, 2009: Supreme Judicial Court affirms the 2006 conviction.