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.
Yet Goldscheider isn’t the first journalist to have been affected by LaGuer. In 1987, John Strahinich — then a Boston magazine staff editor, now an editor at the Herald — wrote a lengthy story on problems with LaGuer’s case. Two years later, he followed up with a remarkably candid piece on his personal investment in LaGuer’s situation:
La Guer [LaGuer’s preferred spelling at the time] and I had stayed in close touch after the story was published — too close for my comfort. We would pore over the grand-jury and trial transcripts, the police reports, the state lab tests, the private investigator’s reports, and so on, piling up the contradictions, finding new ones all the time. . . . Sometimes La Guer would call on the pretext of talking about his case, but it was obvious that he was feeling blue and just wanted to shoot the breeze. We would talk about politics, law, philosophy.
But Goldscheider has it tougher than Strahinich and his like-minded colleagues (including former Phoenix reporter Sean Flynn and Worcester Magazine owner Allen Fletcher) ever did. When it comes to journalistic advocacy, there’s safety in numbers: the more reporters and editors champion a controversial cause, the less controversial it seems. To be a solitary crusader like Goldscheider, though, is to risk being dismissed as a deluded crank — and to discover just how tricky it can be to separate journalism from advocacy.
For example: should Valley Advocate readers question the findings of Goldscheider’s latest article because of his Globe quote after the SJC’s March ruling? And might Goldscheider’s collective reportage on the case seem more credible if it weren’t posted at BenLaGuer.com, which Goldscheider currently maintains, and which, as of this writing, is fronted with a message from the “Free Ben LaGuer NOW! Committee”?
