Going West: True Crime - Daniel LaPlante // 11

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

In 1987, a small New England town is terrorized by a young man who has a penchant for messing with people’s heads. Between burglary, stalking, and even murder, he leaves no stone unturned. This is the story of Daniel LaPlante. **GOING WEST DOES NOT OWN ANY OF THE NEWS CLIPS PRESENTED** WCVB News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbD8NfbK4-I  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's going on true crime fans, I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. Today we want to give a shout out to Rebecca and Jacob and Oregon and Justin and Pennsylvania. Thanks for listening. If you want to shout out on the show go ahead over to our Apple Podcast page and write us a nice overview but make sure to include your name and location. Today's episode is going to be a real creepy episode so if you're listening you may not want to listen in the dark. This case has kind of become an urban legend in some ways and I'm surprised that I never heard of it until he brought it up to me a few days ago.

Yeah I had heard of this case when I was probably about 14 and it always intrigued me so I'm really excited for you guys to listen to our take of it. This is episode 11, the case of Daniel LaPlan. Let's get into it. This is Episode 11, the case of Daniela Plant. Let's get into it. 33-year-old Priscilla Gustafson was raped and murdered in her home in Townsend. Her 7-year-old daughter Abbey and five-year-old son Billham were drowned in the bathtub. The killer, Daniel Lapland, was 17 years old. I am truly sorry for our night's loss.

On phathomable pain that has lasted since December 1, 1987. It's shocking, body rocking, stomach curling. There is a hole in my heart that will never be filled until I meet them in heaven. The Andrews were just a normal family at living in Pepro, Massachusetts. Brian Andrews, the father, lived with his two young teenage daughters, Annie and Jessica. Unfortunately, Mrs. Andrews had recently passed away from cancer, leaving the girls to be cared for by their loving father. One night, in January 1987, Annie and her sister Jessica decided to perform a saiyance in their basement.

They really wanted to try contacting their mother, but they didn't really expect much of it. You know, a lot of us do this at some point in our teenage years, either try a Ouija board or saiyance with our friends. Yeah, um, I mean the normal ones do. The normal ones do, have you done it? Oh, absolutely. I did a really scary one when I was like 19 with all my coworkers and my manager at the time had a lot of experience in it.

And we did it in this empty room in her house and we had like the candles around the Ouija board and I just got way too scared and I literally ran out of the room. My sister actually did one in the house that we grew up in and she swears that it works, she swears by it and she's like I will never mess with the Ouija board again. I've done it before but you know how you always have that one friend that's kind of an asshole and likes to move the planchette which is essentially that little arrow thing that you all put your hands on and it's supposed to move You know there's always that guy that has to you know move it for you and freak everybody out So that's kind of how my situation went. Yeah, everyone that I did it with was really serious about it

And I it was my board so The girls I was doing it with was like you have to start it and I was like I don't know what to do like I was freaking out and the board I have is actually really cool it's a wooden board that my manager's boyfriend made at the time for me for a secret sanagift and he hand drew all of the symbols and letters and then put a glaze on it and they blessed the board and I still have it and it's super badass. That's actually a really cool secret Santa gift to be honest with you. Oh I know and it I don't even know how long it took him to make but he carved the wood himself like he was super handy and he knew that I was into spooky shit so it was really cool. Anyways so these girls

really wanted to contact their mom, so they thought why not just try it. But shortly after they did the saiyans, while the girls were sleeping, they actually heard knocking against their bedroom walls. So they totally thought that their saiyans had worked and that it was a sign that their mom was present. So they spoke to their mom at this time and asked her questions, and all of their questions were responded with knocks.

So obviously they thought this was a ghost. This actually went on for multiple nights, and after several evenings of this knocking, it really started to freak them out when they were sleeping because it was so consistent throughout the night. I mean, could you imagine that would freak me out? Yeah, not only are you asking the question, and you're getting a knock back, could you imagine that would freak me out? Yeah, not only are you asking the question, and you're getting a knock back, but you're also hearing knocks at three in the morning,

you know, all throughout the night, so that would just be really terrifying. So objects around the house began to disappear. If one night something was left out on the table, it'd be all over the floor the next day. Furniture would be moved from one side of the room to the other when the girls would return home. They actually started thinking that their house is haunted by a demon that they had summoned

instead of their mom like they'd been hoping. Brian Andrews, their dad, thought that the girls were doing all of this to the house and claiming it to be spirits when it actually wasn't. They told him it was an evil spirit doing all of it, but he refused to believe them. He thought it was an insane idea. He felt that the girls were acting out and struggling emotionally with their mom's death. Everyone in the family, of course, was taking her death really hard, but Brian thought

it was making them act out. One night a few weeks later, Annie and Jessica were alone in the front room of their home. Suddenly, the knocking continues. So they're really freaked out at this point. The tapping and knocking had become so consistent over those couple weeks that it was driving them insane. But this one night, the knocking wasn't coming from the walls this time. It sounded like it was coming from the basement.

Since their father Brian was out of the house at this time, they put on a brave face and decided to grab a big knife from the kitchen to protect themselves from whatever could be making these noises. Terrified, they slowly walked down into the basement completely unaware of what they were about to see. As they crept further and further down the steps, they saw the words, I'm in your room, come and find me. Written in blood red on the basement wall. Obviously terrified, Annie and Jessica sprint out of the house and run to their neighbor's house. They waited next door for their dad to come home, but when they told him what they'd seen, he didn't believe them at all. He actually blamed them for writing the words in the

basement, thinking that they were just trying to get attention. Brian demanded that the both of them start attending therapy to help cope with the loss of their mom, which again is what he thought was the cause of all the hysteria. It's unclear if they ever ended up going though. So no one ended up being in the girl's bedroom so they actually returned to them that scary night in January. A few weeks went by and they didn't hear any knocking at all. However, the strange noise is returned. But this time, it was coming from Annie's bedroom wall. When the two girls walked into Annie's room, they were again met with a message written in blood red

on the wall that stated, I'm back. Find me if you can. Once again, the girls ran to their neighbors and called their dad, urging him to come home right away. When he did, he was pissed. Obviously he didn't want to leave work to come home and deal with their shit again. He truly believed that they were the ones behind it all. That was until he walked into the house. Brian Andrews noticed incredible disarray in the house, even worse than what the girls had described. He now knew that someone had been inside his house. Brian ran to Annie's room to find a second message added to her wall. It said,

marry me. Suddenly Brian turned around to see a young man standing in Annie's closet, dressed in his deceased wife's dress, along with her makeup and a blonde wig. And he was holding a hatchet. A struggle ensued between Brian and the stranger, but he quickly got away. Brian had no idea how he was able to disappear so fast, but he was out of sight. Brian phoned police and they immediately began investigating and looking for the supposed young man dressed in woman's clothing. They quickly discovered that the messages had in fact been written in ketchup

not blood. As police continued to search the house and try to discover how the young man got into their home, they found a hidden crawlspace behind a cupboard that was built into the wall of Annie's bedroom. When one of the police officers opened that hatch, the boy was curled up inside of it. They pulled him out of it and immediately placed him under arrest. The boy was 16-year-old Daniel Lapland. At this point, the police officers discovered some terrifying things. They saw that the crawlspace where Daniel had been found in tunneled around other areas of the house. In other words, Daniel had been living inside the walls of their

home for weeks. He had even created small people so he could see inside almost all the rooms and spy on Annie whenever he wanted. It was very clear to police that Daniel had been camping out there. They found a sleeping bag, food wrappers, and even beer cans. And can you imagine how creepy this would be? I mean, first of all, your father gets chased by a teenage boy wearing a dress and makeup with a hatchet. And then you find out that this boy had been living inside of your walls for a couple weeks. And the scariest part is like when they were hearing knocking and they think it's their mom it's literally a dude on the other side of that wall just trying to

fuck with you. Like so scary. Yeah so you're thinking like oh my gosh this sayons worked it must be real. But then this guy on the other side of the wall is like, I'm just fucking with you and knocking on the walls, and you think that it's real. Like, that must be so psychologically scarring. Yeah, I can't imagine what they were thinking after that, knowing after the fact what it was for all those weeks. Like, that must have been a horrifying feeling for them.

When I was re-examining this case and doing research on it so that we could do this episode, I was actually laying in bed, and it was probably, I don't know, 11.30 midnight, so it's dark in our room, and I'm like looking at the walls, and looking at the closet, and just like completely terrified.

The only thing is with this case, it's actually pretty unclear how accurate all the details of this occurrence was. If you research this case, you're going to see a bunch of different stories. And for the most part, there's just two. The one that we just told is the most common. But Heath actually found a newspaper from the time that said a different story. So we're going to tell both because we don't know if it's a mixture of the two or if one's true and one's completely false Which I don't know how one of them would be completely false like why would somebody make up an entire story on this but here it is The other main story that I actually read in a newspaper from 1987

claims that Daniel snuck into a family's house while none of them were home. And when they returned, he jumped out of the closet wearing face paint and carrying a hatchet. He then chased the family upstairs while they barricaded themselves in a bedroom and the father lowered one of the girls out of the window to run and get help. Daniel apparently remained in the house hiding from police, and he was captured several days later in the cellar. Most articles you read will include our initial story, but it's worth mentioning that we're not 100% sure which details are completely accurate,

since this case has been kind of twisted into an urban legend. And as we'll mention shortly, Daniel was definitely a person who liked to mess with people, so it became pretty clear quickly that he was incredibly amused by the idea of pretending to be the girl's dead mother just to screw with her heads. Daniel wasn't a completely random boy at a completely random house, though. In fact, he and Annie had been on a date just before Daniel

started sneaking into their house. Sometime in 1986, when Daniel was 16 years old, he had gotten a phone number of a local family in the area. It's unconfirmed how he got the phone number, but it's thought that maybe he had burglarized their home at some point. The house belonged to a family of three, a father and his two daughters. They were the Andrews, Annie, Jessica, and Brian.

Daniel had started talking to Annie and told her that a friend at their school had given him their phone number. And the funny thing about this case is that he told Annie that he was a good-looking blonde boy who lived in the area. He also mentioned that he was very athletic and well-educated. Annie Andrews and Daniel started talking on the phone a lot and after several phone calls they arranged to go out on a date. This was like the original catfish though. When Daniel got to Annie's house, she was so confused because he was a greasy, dark-haired boy who she didn't find at all attractive when she was expecting a jock to show up. As sweet as she was, she looked past this total lie and her dad dropped them off at a movie

that night. She really wasn't that interested in him, so she made up an excuse to go home not long into their date. During their date, Annie told Daniel about the death of her mom, who had passed away from cancer not too long before then, like we mentioned earlier. Apparently, Daniel was super interested in all the details of her mother's death and kept pressing her with questions about it.

And I mean, this is usually a topic that you politely may be asked one or two questions about and then give condolences and move on, just so you don't upset the person, you know, but his interest was going away past curiosity and it was making Annie super uncomfortable. He even asked Annie how she felt the moment her mom died and how much she suffered. And about a week after their day, Daniel accompanied the Andrews to Easter dinner. Shortly afterwards at school, Annie heard from classmates that Daniel was facing rape charges. When her father learned this, that was the end of it, and they didn't see each other again. But obviously that wasn't the last time they'd see each other.

Just after this, was when he began secretly sneaking into their home. Although Daniel was convicted for this, Brian Andrews stated, if Daniel a plant does not get convicted and gets out again, I will personally kill him. It actually cost the Andrews family $30,000 to move out of their house and into another town. This incident really messed up the family and they were afraid to return to their home. They even used

fake names because they were so scared that Daniel was going to find them. So it's worth mentioning that we know that their last name is not Andrews. That's what it says in a lot of articles, but that's not actually their real name. Yeah, I was really confused about this at first. I was doing some research and looking on Facebook through some articles, and a girl had actually tagged her mother that was involved in the incident, but I didn't really think anything of it at first until I started reading the newspaper articles, and I found out that in fact they were using a different name. So out of respect for the family, we're gonna go with the Andrews. Yeah, Heath showed me that at first and he was like,

I don't know why she's saying this is her mom, because that's not the same name. And then just yesterday we found out that they were in fact using fake names. Daniel was charged with breaking and entering, kidnapping, armed assault in a dwelling, larceny, and malicious damage to a property in connection with this incident. Daniel LaPlan was born on May 15th, 1970,

and towns in Massachusetts. He had one brother, Steven, and they both had an incredibly tough and traumatic childhood. Their father was very abusive towards them in many different regards. He would punish and torment the boys physically, emotionally, and sexually on a daily basis. abusive towards them in many different regards. He would punish and torment the boys physically,

emotionally, and sexually on a daily basis. So as you could imagine, this really messed up Daniel. He was a terrible student and didn't make friends easy at all, and he was actually diagnosed with dyslexia early on. So he did have a couple of friends in high school, but most people referred to him as weird and creepy. As a teenager, school officials noticed his incredibly abnormal behavior and his bad hygiene and referred him to a psychiatrist. This is when Daniel was diagnosed with ADHD. He was having a tough time in therapy

because his mental state was really deteriorating. Things got a lot worse when his psychiatrist actually started making sexual advances towards him. And the following year, the psychiatrist sexually abused Daniel during their sessions, which definitely left an impact on his psyche, just like his father's abuse did. I mean, I think it's really unfortunate that Daniel was sexually and etc. assaulted by not one, but two male authoritative figures, because I know this is a topic of nature versus nurture, but I mean who knows if he would have ever even offended later if it weren't for these unfortunate occurrences.

And not to mention that one of them was his therapist who was supposed to be helping him. So I guess I'm just curious if he had continued to go to therapy, but gotten help that he actually needed and the mental support that he needed if he would have ever offended. I mean, obviously I'm not a psychiatrist, but I do work alongside a lot of them, and I know that behavioral health sessions can really help a lot of people, but again, he may have had certain disorders that couldn't have been helped through therapy. But anyway, the unknown doesn't change the awful things that he did.

So I'm actually really curious if there's any record on this sexual abuse or if this is just what Daniel is claiming. And I'm not trying to say that this didn't happen to him. It's just I couldn't find any of those things in my research, so I'm just kind of curious about it. Well, everything that I read said that he was sexually abused. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I know he was sexually abused by his father,

and I feel like there's no doubt about that, but I'm a little confused as to whether the allegations against his psychiatrist are true since I couldn't find any actual records about it. So Daniel became a little bit of a thief. He spent a lot of nights breaking into people's homes and cars in the towns in Massachusetts area and stealing valuables. By the time he was 15, he started to become a bit more cynical with his break ins. Not only would he take their possessions, but he'd move items around the house in such a way that people would know someone was in there. Yet not so obvious

that they knew right away. He started to really enjoy playing these mind games on people and began breaking into homes specifically to mess with them. So this was obviously before what happened with the Andrews. So you can see how he kind of graduated into doing more serious things and then carrying a hatchet. So before that, his crimes were a little bit more innocent. I mean, he was still breaking into people's houses and taking things, but he wasn't hurting people or intending to hurt people it didn't seem. Yeah, it's kind of crazy to see his progression

as a criminal to, you know, just breaking into homes and doing little things like moving furniture or whatever or stealing little valuables to the progression of literally scaring the shit out of a family and forcing them to move to a different town because they're so afraid. We'll get into more of the horrible crimes that Daniel committed after these messages. Hey Trud Crime listeners, check out our podcast. I said Goddamn. We're a true crime comedy podcast hosted by two besties who like to share messed up cases that make you say Goddamn. Every Sunday we try to one of each other's story by sharing a horrific case the other has never heard of. Along the way we splash in some wildly inappropriate jokes and colorful language. Listen every Sunday

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I'm not a husher. I'm not a husher. I'm not a husher. I'm not a husher. I don't know what a Hoosier is. Do you? Yes. As a matter of fact, I do. Great. We don't need to look anything up. Go to Wikipedia and type in alabama hotpocket. No, don't do that. And that'll tell you what a Hoosier is.

Just come listen to us. You'll find out. Anyway, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram. Our handle is at Hoosier homicide. You can also download any episode you prefer. Off of Stitcher, Podbean, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. We tell true crime stories with some random connection to our home state of Indiana. So come listen. That's what she said. Oh my god. And for honest, a goodness. Stand at the corn. Pretty good. And we're back. The year after Daniel was sent to a juvenile facility

for the incident at the Andrews home, he was released. When he got out in October 1987, he pretty much immediately began robbing homes again. One of his burglaries included stealing two handguns from his neighbor's home. In November, Daniel broke into another family's home, the Gustafsins, which was just about a half a mile from where Daniel's family home was in Townsend, Massachusetts.

At this point, he was just 17 years old. The Gustafsins included Andrew, who was in attorney, his wife Priscilla, and their two young children, Abigail, who was seven, and William, who was five. Priscilla was also pregnant at this time. Daniel came and went to undetected, sealing different electronics along with collectible coins. Later that month, Daniel asked a friend where he could get 22 caliber bullets.

His friend later supplied him with a box of them. On December 1, 1987, Daniel returned to the Gustafson's home. On this night, Andrew Gustafson was at work, leaving his wife and children at home by themselves. It's unclear if Daniel was aware that they were home when he initially broke in. That night, Daniel raped Priscilla before shooting her point blank in the head, killing her and her unborn child.

He then proceeded to drown Abigail and William in the bathtub One upstairs and one downstairs After this Daniel fled. It wasn't until Andrew returned home from work that he discovered his whole family was dead Bloodstains everywhere. I had read somewhere that before Abigail was drowned. She was actually bledient Somewhere that before Abigail was drowned, she was actually bludgeoned. I'm not sure if this is accurate or not, but it's something that I had come across. Andrew found Priscilla laying face down on her bed. Her pillows were practically dyed red from her blood. It's unsure why Daniel did this to this poor innocent family, especially since he had gone so quickly from burglary to full on murder. In a lot of his previous burglaries, he had carried a hatchet, but he never heard anybody until now. Many items were found in the gust of Sinhome that doubled as restraints,

leaving police to believe that Daniel forced his way into the home and held them all at gunpoint while he restrained them. It's also thought that he murdered Priscilla first since she was the biggest threat and more capable of fighting back than the children were. Now, it's unclear how they were so immediately confident that Daniel LaPlanet was the culprit, but a man hunt quickly ensued for him after the gust of sin murders. He was considered armed and incredibly dangerous, given his history. Now that he had murdered, there was no telling what he would do next, so they had to find him and they had to find him fast.

At 11.02 a.m. the next morning, a man who recognized Daniel from the news reported seeing him and called the police. However, they were unable to find him. At 2 p.m., a female flagged down police outside of her home as they drove by. She was afraid to go into her home because her gun had been moved around to different locations inside her home, and her coat was missing. She knew someone had been in her house. It turns out Daniel's coat had been left at the scene, meaning he had been there. It's possible he was trying to change clothing to be less recognizable, maybe. At 404pm, a call came to police from a home in Pepperel that a man fitting Daniel's

description had just left the home of Dennis Lang. At this time, Dennis's 17 year old son, 12 year old daughter and their friend were home alone. Daniel knocked on the door, saying he was a neighbor, but the son recognized him and wouldn't open the door. Daniel left but returned, demanding that he be let in. Then he reached into his belt for his gun while the 17-year-old boy ran to a phone. Daniel then fled on foot.

At 4.45 pm, Daniel broke into a woman's home and ordered her at gunpoint to drive him in her van so that he could disappear out of sight from the police. drive him in her van so that he could disappear out of sight from the police. The woman ended up jumping out of the car shortly after, leaving Daniel alone with the car, and he continued driving. She found the police immediately. At 5 p.m., multiple police cruisers were sent around town, checking out several tips and reports regarding Daniel. Someone called reporting that Daniel was in the town of Ayr, which is about 10 miles from Townsend. A police officer found the stolen van with Daniel behind

the wheel. He turned his lights on to pull over the car, and surprisingly the driver pulled the car over. Daniel then jumped out of the van and fled on foot towards the Trimor industrial park. They thought that Daniel was going to try and get on the local train into Boston, and they actually stopped the train in order to stop him from potentially hopping on and escaping. Dozens of calls were coming in at this point from everyone around the town horrified that Daniel was going to come into their home and terrorize them. People stayed close by their radios and televisions to receive constant updates of his possible whereabouts. It's just so scary to think about like being in a town where this is happening and you're just like this guy who's going

literally from house to house screwing with a bunch of different people and you're just sitting in your home thinking oh my god is he gonna come into my house? Yeah and they were actually asking police if they should leave their homes and police were like no no like don't go outside he's he's literally on the loose and I can imagine how freaky that would be like I don't know just thinking about listening to a radio of updates on a killer on the loose like that kind of just freaks me out in itself strangely enough I got a text from my dad's girlfriend a couple days ago and she said by the way, in

case you hear this on the news, there was a double homicide, two blocks away from us and the killer is still on the loose, so we're locked up tight here. And I texted her and my dad back, freaking out because they were just locked up in their home hearing about this killer on the news and I was so scared for them and luckily they ended up finding the perpetrator quickly but not before they could go to a neighbor's house and harm them too but yeah two people ended up dying. Yeah and wasn't it at the moment that you were doing like this portion of the research? Oh yeah exactly. That's why it was even weirder then. Yeah definitely scary. And it's so strange to think about, I mean typically when we think about killers we don't expect a 17-year-old killer to be on the loose and terrifying

people. Usually it's typically a man in their, I don't know, 20s to 30s or even older, but it's just crazy to think that a 17-year-old could do so much terrorizing in this small town. The following evening, so 48 hours after the murders of the Gustafsins, Daniel was found hiding inside a dumpster outside of plastics distributing ink building. They actually found a hair that belonged to Abigail Gustafsins inside the sock that he was wearing, which really helped connect him to the crime, not that it wasn't already obvious considering he was hiding from law enforcement

for two days. In his underwear, they found a loaded 32-calibur revolver along with an extra bullet in his right sneaker. While conducting a search for evidence in the area surrounding the Gustafsson residents, the Townsend Police Chief William May noticed several sneaker prints in a flower bed along the front of the house. Following the prints, Chief may determine that the Gustafson family nameplate was missing. That night, the police brought in tracking dogs who tracked into the woods behind the house. The next day during a search of the woods between the Gustafson and Daniela Plants home, Trooper Sean Baxter found a blue and white flannel shirt. The Gustafson's nameplate and a pair of soaking wet work gloves were wrapped inside the shirt. Chemical tests later indicated the

presence of gunshot residue on the gloves. The tracking dogs sniffed the shirt and began tracking through the woods. The dogs then tracked up to within three feet of Daniel's house. Two state troopers interviewed Daniel that afternoon in the Townsend Public Library. He told them that he spent the previous day home alone watching television. When asked what he was wearing the previous day, he said he was wearing grey sweatpants, a football shirt, and a pair of convurs sneakers. Police obtained search warrants for his home on December 2nd, 1987, and on

December 11, 1987. During the searches, police seized several items not listed in the warrant. On April 7, 1988, they found the murder weapon in the glove compartment of an abandoned vehicle on Daniel's property. Daniel's mom and stepfather actually believed that he's innocent. His mom stated that he was not a violent person and couldn't have done any of these things. But apparently Daniel had also committed other offenses as well, which we kind of assumed because, you know, he burglarized a lot of homes and then with the murders and going into the Andrews home, you would think that he probably did other things that maybe weren't mentioned.

Well, before the Andrews incident, he actually attempted to rape a girl in Townsend and was charged with indecent assault and battery, but he was found innocent on the rape charge. He was also accused of larceny of a motor vehicle around this time. And so he was very much on the police's radar, especially since the area was really small. So committing all of these different crimes just over a few years, police were very aware of his existence. And later on, after those prior incidents that happened with Daniel and after the guest of Sin Murder, I think police realized that he was a threat because he had just gotten out of juvenile hall a year earlier and he had been burglarizing houses.

And so he was kind of on their radar and when they found out that he was gone after the life sentences for the murder of Priscilla, Abigail, and William Gustafsson. From 1988 to 2014 he actually attempted to sue the courts on numerous different occasions for various violations of his rights. He once said that the prison system wouldn't allow him to practice Satanism, so he sued for that. He claimed that he needed specific materials to carry out his satanic rights, but he was denied by the prison officials. Specifically, he asked for ritual oils like dragon's blood, black opium, and honeysuckle. He actually listed over 30 oils and 26 herbs that he said were essential to practicing his faith and remove jinxes, chase away demons, and drive away negative spirits.

He also argued that he should be allowed to make an earth offering during certain celebrations, like the full moon, and that he should be allowed to have different cake for it every month, like carrot cake. Local Wikens and pagans were upset by this because they really thought he was giving their religion a bad name, especially since they usually practiced mysticism and natural magic and he was almost making a mockery of them. He also got super upset during a full moon that he was stuck in the basement during meetings and couldn't see the moon. Gil Massachusetts man named Vaughn Thompson, who practices paganism, said in an email that group members often fight against the stereotype that Daniel LaPlanse represents,

including their association with Satanism, child molesters, murderers, and even animal abusers. Quote, the list could go on. The funny thing is, I think if this man were to be on the outside, he would be terribly disappointed in most pagan circles. We most of the time have one, maybe two pieces of ritual jewelry, which might or might not be recognizable as a wicking symbol. Most of the time we wear street clothes. We serve gluten-free cookies and organic apple juice for our cakes and ale. We're just not all that exciting.

In 2017, Daniel asked for a reduced sentence and made this statement. I do not have the words to fully express my profound sorrow, but I am truly sorry for the harm I have caused, from the very essence of who I am, from the depth of my soul I am sorry. This was the first time Daniel apologized or showed any kind of remorse, but of course, we aren't sure of his statement was genuine or not. His appeal, however, was denied, leaving him in prison for the rest of his life without

the possibility of parole. So basically, he committed the crime when he was 17, but the trial occurred when he was 18 years old. But his lawyer still said that juveniles cannot be sentenced to life in prison without parole. And since he committed the crime when he was a juvenile, it's kind of like a fine line of what the truth is there. So that's why he was trying to get his sentence reduced saying that it wasn't fair because he committed this crime when he was 17. Yeah, and I think that because of the nature of the crimes, the judge was just like, no way, a guy you're never getting out.

Ever since Daniel was convicted, he's been a model prisoner. But so many people think that he should never be allowed to be released. But it turns out that in about 13 years from now, he will have a chance at parole. Andrew Gustafson passed away in 2014, and on his deathbed, he said, don't ever let him out, he should rot in prison. Daniel LaPlanth is now 48 years old and serving his sentence at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk. Thank you so much everybody for checking out this episode of Going West. Yeah, this is a really scary case to do, and if you listen to this episode tonight, make sure you check your closet.

Can't look at walls the same TBH. Next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to check out, so stay tuned for that. By the way, if you guys want early access to episodes and even access to one bonus episode every month, check out our Patreon, which is patreon.com slash Going West podcast. And we have some exclusive stuff on there for you. You just have to subscribe $5 a month. It really helps out the show. And even if you just want to donate $1, we have a tier for that as well, and you can join

the Going West gang. By the way, for everybody asking us about merch, we're going tier for that as well, and you can join the Going West Gang. By the way, for everybody asking us about merch, we're going to have some really cool shirts, owl, and some stickers, ASAP, probably in the next few weeks. If you guys have any comments on this case, and you want to know a little bit more information, go over to our website, goingwestpodcast.com, and leave us a comment on the blog section. And don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts if you want to shout out in the next episode. And don't forget to go follow us on Instagram

at Going West Podcast and on Twitter at Going West Pod. By the way, our episodes come out every Monday morning so make sure to check out the next one and the next one after that. For everybody out there in the world, keep it real, stay weird. Cheerio. 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh

1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1, 1, 1 Thank you. you