Forty-nine years ago, it was 13-year-old Danny’s Croteau’s rapist and murderer, Richard Lavigne, who had performed his graveside service. Needless to say, the Croteau family wanted this abomination corrected. This time, at a second memorial service for Danny on June 28, 2021, it was appropriately Father James Scahill—a frequent critic of the Springfield Diocese during the clergy abuse scandal—delivering the remarks.
Father Scahill, pictured above with Danny’s brother Carl Jr. in the background, said that Danny’s parents, Carl Sr. and Bunny, were simple people: “They were in the very best of ways simple—that is, without guile and pretense. They were blessedly simple. But they were not stupid. They correctly thought a priest could be evil and a murderer.”
And yet they would not let a murderer and his enablers in the diocese steal their faith.
After the service, I spoke to Cat, Danny’s sister. We talked about how religious her parents were—despite a priest murdering their son and the diocese doing its best to sweep it under the rug in the last 49 years. I told her that the last time I saw her dad was on September 26, 2009, when I snapped the photo below of him on the Wilbraham Road sidewalk in front of Gateway Village. At the time he was walking with his six-year-old grandson (Cat’s son Thomas)—the same boy I held in my arms as an infant right before my first interview with Carl, Bunny, and Cat in their home way back in 2003.
That day in 2009 I thought about how quickly time flies, and how much Thomas had grown as a six-year-old, but he had grown up much more the next time I saw him in 2016, when he was a 13-year-old in the same golf camp my son was in at Pine Knoll Golf Course in East Longmeadow. The camp, called First Tee, was run by his father, Thomas Sr., who donated a golf cart to the organization in Danny’s name. During the camp cookout, I talked with Thomas Sr. briefly about the murder—he said that there were still no new developments in the investigation. Indeed, it had been years since case had made the news. Unfortunately, It had grown dormant—a cold case getting colder every year. Then we walked over to the cart and I took the photo below of his dedication placard.
Fast forward to 2021, and there was Thomas, now a high school senior, at his uncle Danny’s memorial service. A full 18 years had passed since I first interviewed the Croteau family—practically a generation—and in recent years, I was sure Lavigne would die a quiet death and say nothing about the murder. I was wrong.
Carl, who died in 2010, and Bunny, who died in 2016, never saw justice in the case. Carl had prayed every day for justice—and for the truth to be revealed—but he knew that the wheels of MAN's justice move slowly, or sometimes grind to a stop. But he certainly believed that GOD's justice would prevail. It will.
Bunny, saying her rosary constantly in her final days, seemed to have some sort of mystical revelation about the case’s future conclusion, according to Cat. I told Cat that in honesty I never thought we’d see the day in which Lavigne would admit culpability—and the case would be closed—but Bunny had thought otherwise.
“One of the last things my mother told me was that Lavigne wasn’t going to go to jail, but someday you’re going to hear the truth,” recalled Cat. “She said she wouldn’t live to see it—it was going to happen after she died.” Cat insisted that Bunny was completely coherent. “She was lucid,” said Cat. “She sat there saying her rosary and she was kind of cheerful. She said, ‘I have all the answers I need now.’ I was like, ‘Okay...’ At the time I thought it was her illness, but it hit me how resolute she was about it. She felt she had all her answers. Maybe it was her illness, but nonetheless...”
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During that 18 years since I interviewed the Croteaus, I thought there would be a break in the case early on, but in recent years was resigned to the probability that it wouldn’t be officially solved. In December of 2017, I wrote my what I thought would be my final post on the case. “The Daniel Croteau Murder, Part 9” was supposed to wrap up my series on the homicide because it really did seem like the investigation was permanently stalled.
The following month, I stopped writing the Hell’s Acres blog after getting laid off from my job—I vowed to spend all my spare time trying to get my career back on track. In May of 2018, I had been laid off for five months and was feeling rather desperate. Although I had decent vibes from a recent job interview, I had my doubts because the hiring manager had said she would make a decision by the Friday before Memorial Day 2018, and that day had torturously come and gone with infinite slowness and without a call.
That was when Cat (pictured below) told me how furious she was about the book Death of an Altar Boy and all its inaccuracies about the murder. She was mortified that its author, E.J. Fleming, hadn’t even attempted to contact her or her sister Jackie. Cat wanted me to continue to write Danny’s story online, but I was focused on getting a job first—and then I would resume writing the Hell’s Acres blog. I told her I was possibly close to getting hired but unfortunately I didn’t get “the call” when I had expected to.
I also told Cat that I came back to the Catholic church partly because of her father. In my teens, 20s, and 30s I was a lapsed Catholic. I had refused to make my confirmation at Cathedral not just because of the bullying nuns at Ursuline Academy, where I attended first through eighth grade, but also because of Danny's murder and the fact that my friend's brother was molested by Father Alfred Graves.
But Carl’s faith remained unshaken, even after Lavigne had killed his boy, even after a private investigator discovered that the priest was part of a child molesting priest sex ring that the diocese was well aware of. I learned a lot about forgiveness and tolerance from this man.
On Memorial Day weekend of 2018, Cat told me that she would say her father’s favorite Novena for me in the hope I would get the job. “I’m also going to do something kind for someone in your name,” said Cat. “It's what my father would have done for you. I am sure he will watch over you. Ask him for a hand. I know two people who thought very highly of him and told me that they were sure he helped them out. You will find a job soon. Maybe it’s Dad’s story of faith, hope, and love you're supposed to write. I think he would like that. In the meantime, I will say that Novena.”
I told her that I would ask Carl for his help, and why not? “I will find out by the end of next week on this particular job but who knows?” I said. “If not this job opportunity, maybe the next one. I have learned to trust in God’s will, and I know the power of prayer, and I appreciate your efforts. I can also see my own father in heaven looking over me. Believe me, my writing on your brother’s murder will continue in due time. It will happen. Anyway, thanks for everything.”
On Memorial Day, Cat texted me five words: “Your prayers are being answered.” I had no idea how to respond. So I didn’t.
The next day, I received the job offer. I couldn’t wait to tell Cat. “Congratulations,” she said. “I have a few things that were my Dad’s. I would like you to have them.”
The next day I went over her house in Sixteen Acres and she gave me four of her father’s devotional scapulars and a medal of the Virgin Mary (pictured below).
The “black scapulars” were from the Passionist Fathers: “Jesu XPI sit semper in cordibus nostris”: May the passion of Jesus Christ always be in our hearts. Carl used to wear—and wear out—these scapulars on his daily walks down Wilbraham Road in Sixteen Acres, so he’d pick more up at the Our Mother of Sorrows monastery in West Springfield. I wouldn’t dream of wrecking these cloth necklaces, so they sit on my desk as kind of holy relics—reminders of not only Jesus, but Carl, a great man who taught me a lesson in faith and forgiveness. A father who, in his living days, never received justice from law enforcement for the murder of his son.
On May 23, 2021, I messaged Cat when masslive reported that DA Anthony Gulluni would hold a press conference announcing closure on the Danny Croteau case the next day. She responded that she knew a trooper had interviewed Lavigne at his bedside before he died, so I realized that there was a murder admission of sorts. What I wasn’t prepared for was Lavigne acknowledging that he had assaulted Danny and left the scene, only to come back and find him dead in the river.
In the weeks following the press conference, Cat vacillated between relief and disappointment over Lavigne’s self-incriminating—yet, at times, contradictory—claims.
“At times, I get really, really angry,” she said. “My stomach gets in an uproar. Lavigne admitted to feeling sad when he said he saw Danny dead in the water—kind of sad, but not really. But he didn’t tell anyone.”
Even if Lavigne’s scenario were somehow true—that he returned to the scene but hadn’t killed the boy—he unbelievably kept what he saw to himself.
“When Danny was missing, one of the first calls my parents made was to Lavigne,” she said. “My father called him multiple times during the course of the evening and asked, ‘Have you heard from him?’ My mother called him too. He said he hadn’t seen Danny.”
Carl used to tell Cat try to not get too bitter over the murder, and to not to let anyone come between her and God. And for the most part, she hasn’t. To be sure, her faith has been tested by this whole ordeal. She credits Father Warren Savage, a former teacher at Cathedral High School, with having the patience of a saint with her. “He had to deal with me at Cathedral when I was an angry high schooler,” she said. “When I was a teenager, I was stark, raving angry. One time, I really laid into him in the middle of the hallway, and he told me, ‘You have the right to be angry with me. Your faith must be shaken.’ That calmed me right down.”
Several times Father Savage (pictured below) was a guest speaker in Cat’s classes at the Elms College when she was earning her BS in nursing there. He said to her, “You look really familiar.” When she told him who she was, he said with a smile, “Oh yes, I remember YOU.”
Carl also taught Cat the healing power of forgiveness—indeed, Carl had forgiven Lavigne, which is something she still finds difficult to do. Then she reminds herself that some of Lavigne’s actions could have been result of him being pre-wired to have antisocial personality disorder. “He was a sociopath, and he could have been born that way,” said Cat. Or it could have been ingrained in his psyche during strange family dynamics when he was a toddler and older: the old nature vs. nurture debate. There had been reports of Lavigne acting out and torturing small animals to death as a child, as well as him possibly having a sexual relationship with his mother as a teen. To wit, a member of Lavigne’s family wrote to Hell’s Acres about the inappropriate behavior of his mother, which is detailed at the bottom of another post: nudity, sexual touching, and possibly more.
As far as we know, Lavigne began abusing boys as a teenager, getting fired from a summer job at 17 after he molested a six-year-old. His termination notice for that incident is shown below (“Undesirable person to be around children”), as well as witness statements from both the child (as an adult) and his mother:
“Lavigne had a choice as an adult,” said Cat. “As a child he didn’t. As a child he endured what he had to endure. The child I can forgive, but as an adult he was free to make the choices he made. That was how my dad taught me to deal with it.”
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Gulluni’s surreal press conference on May 24, 2021, in which he announced Lavigne’s presumed guilt, was welcome news for many people following the case, but for others it was a stunt. Why, they ask, did the DA wait until May 21, the day Lavigne died, to decide to indict him when they had all they needed after their last interview with him on May 4? But these skeptics need to remember that Gulluni began the re-investigation in March of 2020, re-testing the DNA of the blood left at the murder scene (although to no avail), re-interviewing witnesses, and carefully building their case.
“Mr. Gulluni was very emotionally impacted by this investigation,” said Cat. “As a nurse, I can body-read people really well. It wasn’t fake.”
She also had high praise for State Trooper Mike McNally, who at times had to play the part of a psychiatrist to get Lavigne to spill some—but not all—of the beans. “He did a great job,” said Cat. “He sounded relaxed and very comfortable, and he couldn’t have been very comfortable rubbing elbows with an individual like that.”
DA Anthony Gulluni (left) and State Trooper Mike McNally
In these interviews, Lavigne seemed to be comfortable with the undivided attention he received in those 11 hours, talking freely—to a certain extent—about Danny and his last day with him. “He got his last five minutes of fame,” mused Cat. However, he couldn’t really enjoy the public spotlight: on May 21, it was time for him to appear before the ultimate judge. One can only speculate what happened when he met his maker.
“I did have a bizarre dream in which my father told me that even hell doesn’t want Lavine—his soul is destined to wander the earth. He is without a home,” she said. I think I can speak for all earthlings (or at least the ones who grew up in Sixteen Acres) in saying that THIS world doesn’t want him either.
The DA’s announcement that he was ready to indict Lavigne for murder—and the graveside service officiated by Father Scahill—helps close a very long chapter in a saga that began in 1972 (or actually started in 1967, when the priest began molesting Cat’s brothers). But for Cat, there can never be full closure in the affair, even with the diocese’s apologies and promises to be proactive and transparent in the face of clerical sex abuse of minors.
Maybe visiting the murder scene would bring her some clarity. She has considered doing this out of curiosity—and maybe a bit of compulsion—but so far, she can’t bring herself to do it.
“The other day I drove by there,” she said. “Every once in a while, I do my little drive-by’s. One day I’ll go down there, I guess.”
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I have to credit both Cat Powers and investigative journalist Crash Barry with motivating me to get the Hell’s Acres blog going again after a two-year hiatus. Crash kind of picked up where I had left off, producing his podcast series Devils and Dirtbags about pedophile priests in the Springfield Diocese—and specifically the Danny Croteau murder. He was the only member of the media to ever interview Richard Lavigne about the homicide.
So, in February of 2020, I resumed writing the blog on the very subject I had ended it with: the Danny Croteau murder.
And last month there I was, at Danny’s graveside service, staring at the same portrait of Danny that I saw overlooking the family living room in 2003.
Back then, I was certain that Lavigne would eventually face charges in the slaying. Eighteen years later, there would be no indictment. However, in an odd twist during a case that has seen its share of bizarre turns, Lavigne died on the day they were obtaining a warrant for his arrest.
“When his treacherous evil was at last exposed,” said Father Scahill, “and the complete charade and fraud of his total life made clear—humanly there was the longing for human justice and punishment. Strangely, at the very instant of exposure, it was not to be. Death intervened. Was that strange or providential?”
