Original subtitles

Andrew Gustafson lived in Townsend, Massachusetts with

his wife and his two children.

He was trying to get in touch with his wife, and he was

calling the house in Townsend, but she wasn't picking up,

so he was concerned.

He came home, and he found no sign of life at the house.

He called for his wife, no answer.

Called for his children, no answer.

So he had this feeling of dread inside him.

He went upstairs to the bedroom

and his wife was lying face down on the bed with a bloody

pillow on top of her head.

He didn't have it in him to go looking for the children so

he called the police and waited for them outside.

This was just a horrific, horrific scene and something

that does not happen in little New England towns like this.

So people were terrified. The entire area was terrified.

On December 1st, 1987,

when the police arrived,

Andrew Gustafson told them that his wife was dead upstairs.

She was also several months pregnant.

And they questioned him, "How do you know she's dead?"

And he said that he just knew

and said that his children were probably dead too,

but he hadn't gone to look for them.

So the police didn't know what was going on.

I was notified by the state police headquarters of

an unattended death in Townsend.

We went upstairs, and in the bedroom, I observed

the body of Priscilla Gustafson on the bed.

I saw what appeared to be bullet holes in the back of

the pillowcase, or the pillows that were on her head.

She was partially clothed.

One hand was tied to one of the bedposts,

and on the nightstand was a half empty bottle of beer,

which I thought was very strange,

and an open condom packet.

When I went to the upstairs bathroom,

I saw the body of a young boy,

five years old, face down in the bathtub.

We do try to compartmentalize those types of scenes

so it doesn't affect the job that we do.

But I just have a vivid memory of that little boy in the tub.

And on the first floor,

was the body of a young girl,

fully clothed,

drowned in the downstairs bathtub.

To think what it would take to drown William and Abigail,

just two innocent children, and not just killing them,

but drowning them.

That's physically, hands-on, holding somebody

under the water until they die.

For someone to do that, there's, there's, I mean,

it's beyond words, it's beyond evil.

Andrew Gustafson was an attorney,

was married to Priscilla.

She taught Sunday school and kindergarten.

She was well-liked in the community,

and they seemed like they had an idyllic life.

But as a homicide detective, you have to start from the very

closest circle to the people who knew the victim.

In this case, no one was above suspicion.

While police checked out Andrew Gustafson's alibi,

almost immediately, word spread.

I mean, Townsend, Massachusetts is small-town

America, even though it's only 30 miles outside of Boston.

This is kind of Americana.

A lot of the cemeteries in this area go back to the 1600s,

and so it has a really long history.

It's a safe, quaint little New England town.

And Townsend only had, in the '80s, probably

10,000 people.

This is your home for original reporting.

The murder was so horrific, it drew the attention of

the Boston media, some national media, and the media descended

upon that little town.

Everywhere you turned, there was a sense of fear,

a sense of-- am I safe

in this little town that I grew up in?

People were locking their doors.

If they owned guns,

they were making sure they were loaded.

Everybody was looking out for their neighbors.

People were looking out for anything suspicious.

The entire area was on edge.

So police checked out Andrew Gustafson's alibi,

and it became clear he was not involved in the murders.

This poor man lost his wife, lost his baby, and lost his two

children all at the same time with no known motive.

It must have been just the worst possible day that

anyone can imagine.

So Andrew Gustafson spoke to the police, and he recalled

that there were things missing from the house, and they'd had

a burglary in recent days prior to the murders

where a cable box had been missing, where there'd been

a glass of beer or a drink left out in the house.

Things that didn't seem that serious at the time,

now took on importance.

Police knew that there'd been a string of burglaries

in the area,

so when Andrew Gustafson told the police about

the prior burglary, immediately they thought these

might be linked.

The police had a working theory

that Priscilla and William had come home and caught

the burglar there and that this had been an impulsive crime.

Abigail came home later, she was the last one killed.

Police were looking at this as possibly just being

an interrupted burglary.

But everybody knew that we had a killer on the loose.

No one knew where he was going to show up or what horrible

crime would happen next.

During that time, I was a police lieutenant from

the town of Pepperell, Massachusetts.

When I heard of the murders and the nature of the murders,

it sounded like something Daniel LaPlante would do.

And I think he was entertained by such things.

We had already arrested him on the charges of kidnapping.

He was certainly a person of interest based on

his violent past. All rise.

But this guy is a juvenile.

Daniel LaPlante was only a 17-year-old boy.

But he was no ordinary teenager.

He was a dangerous individual,

cold, calculating,

a very, very smart young man.

He was on a path of escalation.

His criminal acts went from

routine breaking and enterings to

the most sinister and bizarre acts that

I had ever experienced.

Everybody knew that a killer was out and on the run,

And everybody was looking over their shoulders.

Police told people to stay indoors.

They told people to keep their doors locked.

Police had no idea what was motivating the killer.

The fact that there had been a string of local burglaries

seemed like it was related because of the prior burglary

in the Gustafson's home.

But were these even related to the burglaries?

They really had no idea.

We developed a list of the usual suspects.

And I use that term very loosely.

It's people who had criminal background, who have committed

violent crimes, who have been breaking into houses.

17-year-old Daniel LaPlante was on that list.

We found out the house breaks, including stealing guns out of

houses, all started to occur after he got released on bail.

We were starting to put pieces together.

A couple of detectives found him at a library in Townsend.

So they went and spoke to him, and they didn't

have a great feeling on the interview.

He told them that he had an alibi, that he'd been at

a birthday party, and there were other people

who could corroborate that.

But he seemed a little jumpy, so police were suspicious.

And then he just fled.

He was a person of interest,

but we didn't have evidence that tied him to the scene.

So we needed to gather as much information about

Daniel LaPlante as we can.

He had committed crimes in Townsend as a juvenile.

And also in Pepperell, which is a neighboring town,

he was arrested and was out on bill for the crimes he had

committed in Pepperell.

Frank Bowen lived in Pepperell, Massachusetts.

He was a bus driver, and he lost his wife to cancer

in 1986.

He had two daughters.

Tina was a teenager in high school, and she had a younger

sister, Karen.

And the three of them were alone and grieving the loss of

their mother, trying to cope with Frank working long,

long hours, and his daughters home alone.

The daughters were not dealing well with the loss of

their mother, and they were trying to contact her.

They had a seance, and while conducting the seance

to try to communicate with the deceased mother,

they started to hear noises,

knocks on the walls,

and they felt that it may be a signal from

their deceased mother.

And then they started noticing things that seemed out

of the ordinary.

They'd come into rooms, and they would find lights that

had been off were now on.

Things were moved in various rooms around the house.

So they started asking their mother questions.

And when they would ask questions, there would be

knocking in response to it.

So the two little girls who are dealing with the loss of

their mother, went and told their father that they actually

had their mother in the house

and she was trying to contact them.

And the father, Frank, just thought that

they were grieving.

It did create a disjoint between the two daughters

and their dad.

He honestly felt that they needed psychological help

and that this was not happening.

But that changed very quickly. On December 8th of 1986,

the family had returned home

and found that one of the toilets had been used.

They immediately figured that somebody had been inside

the home, and they started a search.

When he got up into his bedroom, Frank finds a man

in there wearing this oversized coat in war paint

carrying an ax.

It's like something out of a horror movie.

And he took this family hostage.

He was very deliberate. He was very calm.

He seemed to have no fear whatsoever.

And he had secured them in that room and had left them there.

At that point, one of the daughters escaped,

was able to go next door, report the kidnapping,

call the police, and we arrived.

We searched the home, the woods around the home.

We searched the area, the roads, and no suspect

was found.

As police officers, we had to believe the story as

unbelievable as it sounded.

I had covered murders.

I had covered suicides, strange deaths.

I had never encountered anything like this.

During our search, I did find the hatchet just outside one

of the doors.

But as far as a sign of an intruder, we found none.

No member of that family were able to identify the intruder.

His disguise, apparently, and the fear he instilled made

it impossible for them to identify who this was.

But now Frank knew his girls had been telling the truth,

that there was something happening.

It wasn't just in their minds.

Our thought was that the suspect, if he existed,

had fled into the woods. We're talking nighttime.

And it would have been very easy for the intruder to hide

himself in the woods.

And finding him would have been extremely difficult.

The family didn't want to be back in

the house, understandably. The girls were just terrified.

So immediately, they went and just stayed in

a hotel, because they knew they couldn't sleep in that

house again.

Two days later, Frank returned to the house.

And as he was approaching, he saw something.

He saw the same man as before

and thought, this man is trying to kill us.

So Frank Bowen called the police.

I got there about 10 minutes later, and you could see

he was distraught. And he said, "I just saw him.

He's in the window. He waved at me."

I said, "OK."

The police had locked the house when they left the night

of the incident.

So I walked around the house to check for tracks.

There was none.

No broken windows. The doors are intact.

So I decided if I'm going to go in his house With a very slim

possibility in my mind that somebody's still here,

I'm still not going to just walk in.

So I unlocked the door real quiet.

As soon as I cleared the door, there was a picture up on

the right-hand wall

of the family.

And there's a big knife stuck right in that picture.

And written in magic marker, it said, "I'm still here,

come find me."

At that point, I said, "He's here.

"I don't know how,

but he's here."

This was terrifying for this family.

An intruder had been in the house and had held

the family hostage.

And now he's back again. He won't give up.

Officer Steve Bezanson arrived at the Bowens' house, and he was

certain that the intruder was still there.

I'm listening quietly,

because now I'm thinking, I want him to think

the homeowner's here,

not me.

And I look to the right, and I can see the hallway.

That goes down to the rest of the house, and there's another

picture of the family with another knife stuck through it.

I said to myself, I got to search this house,

and I'm going to need help doing it to get it right.

So I backed out real quiet,

and I got the radio, and there was a sergeant

at the station. And I said, "I need you up here.

I need you up here now."

We checked everything,

closets, between mattresses, under the bed, you name it,

we checked it.

Every place we could possibly think of, we checked.

And we wound up in a laundry room downstairs.

And I remember looking up at the ceiling going,

I don't understand why we can't find him.

And then, just like that,

I looked up at the corner.

There was a set of pipes from the upstairs bathroom,

but they didn't like looking at the pipes.

So they built a wall to hide the pipes.

I'm looking at this wall going,

there's enough room someone could hide behind that wall.

As soon as I walked over there and turned on the light, I saw

there's a four foot pile of dirty clothes right there,

and nobody stacks dirty clothes behind a false wall.

I just moved a couple of pieces of clothing.

I saw black hair,

and I said, got it.

He just looked at me out of the corner of his eyes,

and I could see the wheels turning.

I said, "I want to see your hands real slow."

And he's got a pistol right here.

And he put his hands up real slow.

When I saw they were empty, I reached in and grabbed him

right by the arm, said, "Let's go."

The intruder was a 16-year-old boy.

His name was Daniel LaPlante.

This was no ordinary teenager.

Beyond that, this was no ordinary criminal.

After having arrested many young men, I was rather

surprised by his unconcerned manner.

This young man, despite his age, was

very dangerous.

And for the first and last time in my entire career, I bypassed

the usual ritual of taking only two mug shots, and I took six

of them, thinking that they would be used sometime

in the future.

So Daniel suffered a lot of abuse as a child.

He was abused by his father, his psychiatrist, by other

people, sexually and physically and psychologically

for a long period of time. And he displayed really

troubling behavior from an early age.

He was a loner.

He was somebody who didn't know how to deal with other

human beings.

And that only got worse with time.

He was held at my request without bail on the charges of

kidnapping, but also for mental evaluation.

At the time, we approached the assistant DA

to really work hard on the case to get it before the judge.

In other words, for his trial not to be delayed.

To be targeted by a psychopathic person like this

is really shocking.

So once they arrested the suspect, they realized that

Tina had dated Daniel LaPlante once.

He'd made contact with her over the phone.

And then eventually, they had a date and they went

out for ice cream.

And he misrepresented himself on the phone.

He completely misrepresented who he was

and what he looked like.

And she got a bad feeling from him.

So she broke it off after that one date.

So that one date led to this guy stalking her and living

inside the walls of her house.

Daniel was in and out of that house for six months.

One of his acts was to remove electrical outlets

so he could spy on the family members.

And he was able to see when they vacated a room,

leave his hiding space

and create these disturbing acts

that would get the girls to fight among themselves

and to tell their dad these stories of milk being drank,

channels being changed,

and it would allow him to slip back into his hiding place.

Everybody remembers that feeling of hearing something

thump in the basement...

...thinking it's a monster, thinking somebody's hiding

in the closet.

In this particular case, it was actually true.

It's terrifying that a single date, just going out for ice

cream, and not progressing beyond that is going to turn

into somebody breaking into your house

and then tormenting you for months.

Whatever his plan was, whether it was to rape one of

the daughters, whether it was to kill all three people,

I can't be sure.

So Daniel LaPlante was sent to Bridgewater Hospital for

psychiatric evaluation.

And after that evaluation, he was diagnosed with

antisocial personality disorder, and he was put into

juvenile detention.

And everybody felt they should be safe.

Daniel LaPlante lived on Elm Street.

And it was only a mile through the woods from the Gustafson's

house, except Daniel LaPlante was in juvenile detention,

or so they thought.

When he turned 17, the judge decided that

he should be tried as an adult.

And when Daniel LaPlante was charged as an adult,

he was able to get bail.

He was brought before the judge, not to be tried,

but on a bail hearing.

And the judge, at the time, without any police input

or presence, released him on $10,000 bail.

And his mother mortgaged their house

and put up the $10,000 bail to get him out.

There's no question that the judge made

a massive mistake.

Daniel LaPlante was very dangerous, from terrorizing

a family to kidnapping.

When I found out about the murders, I said, "I wonder

what Danny LaPlante is doing lately."

Homicide investigators had this other violent, strange,

bizarre crime, with Daniel LaPlante living a mile from

this triple murder.

I think it's an aha-moment for the police, but they didn't

have any hard evidence to tie him to the murders other than

his proximity to them and his prior violent past.

So at 7 o'clock that next morning, we reconvened at

the crime scene

to gather as much information, as much evidence as we can.

Outside the house, there was a pillow laying on the ground.

So I called in a state police K9 tracking team,

and we began a scented search.

And the dog was on a heavy scent, tracking from the yard

into the woods.

Within a few minutes, one of the state troopers found

a wet flannel shirt.

In addition, there was also wet gloves in the woods.

So the police believe that those articles of clothing

could have been involved with drowning the children.

The K9 immediately picked up on a scent from those

items and led us through the woods,

and eventually led us to Daniel LaPlante's house.

After we did the K9 track, we applied for

a search warrant.

We executed that search warrant, did a complete search

of the entire residence.

Daniel was not there at that time.

One of the key pieces that we found were a pair of wet

socks in Daniel LaPlante's bedroom.

And on the wet socks, we found a blonde hair.

Could be from Abigail.

In addition to that, we found some bullets.

Those spent bullets matched the cartridges that were used

to murder Priscilla Gustafson.

There was no doubt that we were on the right track.

After we recovered those items, we applied for an arrest

warrant for Daniel LaPlante.

But at this point, Daniel had fled, and a manhunt was on.

We released his picture to the media,

and the media ran with it.

24 hours after the triple homicide of the Gustafson

family in Townsend, police are still on the hunt

for their killer.

On the 6 o'clock news, the 11 o'clock news,

they posted his picture.

We tried to let people know we were looking for

Daniel LaPlante, and anyone who could help us,

we encouraged them to drop us a tip.

The media from Boston and from Worcester and from all over

Massachusetts had descended on Townsend and Pepperell,

and as a reporter, I was talking to the police officers,

the Chiefs of Police, I mean, everybody was

harried and frazzled.

People who were off duty had come back on duty.

Everybody was involved with this.

For the first time in my police career, and the last time,

I put on my bulletproof vest.

I felt Daniel would head to Northwest Pepperell because

he knew it well.

It's almost rural, heavily wooded, very easy to

avoid detection.

And my choice was prophetic.

The reports of a suspicious young male in the area were

almost immediate.

And they were located within a wood area bordered by

four roads.

So we circled that area.

I pulled into a driveway in one of the homes.

And a lady said, "I know why you're here.

I just arrived back home.

Could you please come in my home while I reenter it?"

And I said, "We certainly will, ma'am."

I asked my partner to remain in the cruiser.

So upon our arrival into the home, it didn't take more

than half a minute, and I heard a loud thud upstairs.

I quickly asked the lady, "Do you have a pet?"

She said, "I have a cat." I said, "That was no cat."

Upon getting to the top of the stairs, I found a 16-gauge

shotgun lying at my feet with the bolt closed,

assuming it was loaded.

I believe that was the sound of the thud that I heard.

We did a thorough search of the entire home.

He had fled from an upstairs window, had jumped onto

the garage, into the woods behind the home,

and had taken flight.

His goal was to take me out with a 16-gauge shotgun.

I believe what deterred him was the presence of my partner

in the cruiser.

The husband of the house did indicate that the shotgun was

his, but he indicated that a handgun was missing, and also

a belt of ammunition.

And it was obvious that the intruder was attempting to

arm himself.

Everybody knew that the killer was running around,

and the police were everywhere.

Every time somebody saw something move in the woods,

they'd call it in to the police.

People are locked into their homes in total fear.

And they should have been.

They absolutely should have been.

When you kill three people, there were no bounds anymore.

There was a real danger of him not just abducting anybody,

but he would have killed them.

People knew they had to try to catch him before

somebody else died.

This was one of the largest manhunts in

Massachusetts history.

Everywhere you turned, there was a police car.

There was an officer looking for Daniel LaPlante.

We knew this person was dangerous.

We knew he had the potential to kill again.

We needed to get him off the streets.

You have to remember, we were dealing with this young

person who hid himself in walls, who made his way through

this forest.

So this person was skilled at avoiding detection.

In a matter of 15 to 20 minutes, I do get a report that

once again, faced with a police officer, this fleeing felon

decided to run into a lumberyard in

the town of Ayer.

My fear was with LaPlante armed with a handgun, somebody was

gonna get taken hostage

or somebody was gonna get killed.

So the police cordoned off the area.

They blocked off the streets. A police helicopter was up

and police were going through it and at some point one of

the officers thought he heard something by a dumpster.

Several officers surrounded the dumpster.

They ordered Daniel to come out.

And he finally decided to surrender himself.

He was transported to the state police barracks located on

Elm Street in the town of Concord, Massachusetts.

He was charged with the murder of Priscilla Gustafson,

Abigail Gustafson, and William Gustafson.

I sat next to him during trial. His eyes were cold.

He looked right beyond you. No remorse whatsoever.

So I covered the trial for my newspaper.

I remember sitting in court and looking at LaPlante,

and he was just without emotion, just expressionless.

Like, he never showed an ounce of empathy.

He never showed any discomfort for what was going on,

just a soulless look.

The jurors can follow us with their notebooks if they can.

There were several factors that linked Daniel to the murders.

Shell casings that were found in the LaPlante home were

the same exact type as those found at the murder scene.

Also, a hair found on one of Daniel's socks was indeed from

the head of the murdered Abigail Gustafson.

And during one of the searches at the LaPlante home,

the actual murder weapon was found,

which was a .22 revolver in an abandoned vehicle located on

the LaPlante property.

We also recovered two cable TV boxes and remote controls that

were taken previously at the Gustafson home.

So before the murders happened, LaPlante had been in that

house previously.

Thank you. May all be seated.

At the courtroom, ironically located at

the intersection of Elm Street and Gorham Street,

the jury found Daniel LaPlante guilty of the murder of three

members of the Gustafson family.

Guilty of murder in the first degree.

He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms with no

chance of parole.

You're looking at somebody, perhaps, if such a thing exists

being totally evil.

The lead investigator told me, "Tom, have you seen how

Elm Street keeps popping up on this?"

You know, his residence on Elm Street, he gets taken to

the state police barracks on Elm Street in Concord.

He's prosecuted, found guilty, at the courthouse at the corner

of Elm Street in Lowell, Massachusetts.

There are seven total Elm Street connections

in this LaPlante saga, which is quite bizarre.

Was justice served here?

I guess under the law, justice was served.

But how can you ever recover from losing your wife

and your two children and your unborn baby?

So he was off the streets.

But as far as the Gustafson family goes, I can't, I can't

answer that question.

You know, a case like this is just so, so terrible.

Just, it's just so awful that people never get over it.

Like, it's a kind of thing that makes people pause and really

think, how could one human being do this to another?

I've never forgotten it.

You know, I covered it as a reporter, but I've never

forgotten this case. It was evil showing its face.

Two beautiful children, another one on the way,

and this terrible person broke into the house and ended it.

For no reason, just killed these people.

There was no real motive that we ever uncovered,

other than the fact that they walked in when he was in

that house.

This person was cold

and evil personified.

Once upon a time...

Elm Street was a good place to live.

We were the type of community where people still waved to you.

The charm was there.

It's pretty... but we have our fair share of

serial killers.

There was satanic rituals being held there.

Is he still out? Is he going to come after me?

A firefighter said something heinous had happened.

You don't really know when it's going to happen,

or what's going to happen or who's doing it.

I was screaming "My dad's dead! Someone's killed him."

Evil took over that night.

Be aware of the danger out there.

I don't know if I've seen a broadsword like that.

Detective found things that were beyond their wildest nightmare.