ERIC GOLDSCHEIDER’S convictions about LaGuer’s innocence have become something of a liability in an otherwise successful career in journalism. |
Ben LaGuer is one of three things: the victim of massive injustice, a con man of staggering persistence, or a delusional head case. Twenty-three years ago, LaGuer was convicted of beating and raping Lennice Plante, a 59-year-old Leominster woman, and sentenced to life in prison. But he’s always insisted on his innocence, even though professing guilt could have helped him win parole.
LaGuer became a cause célèbre in the ’80s and ’90s, with an array of local journalists and luminaries (including Deval Patrick and then–Boston University president John Silber) advocating on his behalf. Everything changed in 2002, however, after a much-anticipated DNA test linked LaGuer to the crime. Never mind recent stories about wrongful convictions or problems at the Massachusetts State Police crime lab: today, LaGuer’s former backers — including those in the press — have either changed their minds about his case or decided to keep quiet.
Except one: Eric Goldscheider, an Amherst-based freelance journalist who, to his own professional detriment, has established himself as LaGuer’s journalistic champion and confidante. Consider what transpired after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) unanimously rejected LaGuer’s request for a new trial on March 23. (LaGuer’s attorney had argued the conviction should be voided due to the discovery of four fingerprints taken from the crime scene that didn’t match LaGuer’s — evidence which, inexplicably, wasn’t shared with the defense during LaGuer’s trial.) The next day, Goldscheider was the lone pro-LaGuer voice quoted by the Globe; he expressed disappointment at the SJC’s ruling and said it was “not the end of the line.”
Two weeks later, Goldscheider made good on his promise: the Valley Advocate, the Easthampton-based alt weekly, published a story he’d written based on new disclosures from Annie DeMartino, who’d been Plante’s caretaker in the years after she was attacked. Plante’s identification of LaGuer as her assailant was central to his 1984 conviction; Goldscheider’s piece raises new doubts about Plante’s lucidity and competence. (Plante died in 1999.)
During a recent interview in his pleasantly cluttered Amherst home, Goldscheider was clearly excited about the legal potential of his latest reportage: DeMartino’s remarks offered multiple arguments for a new trial, he claimed. But he also showed signs of LaGuer fatigue. “I still believe that Ben will win, and I’ll be there to celebrate right along with him,” he said at one point. “But now — it’s a cliché: ‘I need to spend more time with my family.’ But it’s true. I do need to spend more time with my family.”
In The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm offered a famously one-sided description of the reporter-subject relationship: “Every journalist. . . . is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.” Goldscheider is walking proof that Malcolm got it wrong.
Spreading the word
Goldscheider wants LaGuer’s story to end well. He also wants to let it go. But he can’t, for two reasons: his research has convinced him LaGuer is innocent, and no other reporter is waiting to take up the cause.
