RedHanded - Episode 103 - Daniel LaPlante: Fact vs Fiction

Episode Date: July 18, 2019

This week the girls do some much needed myth-busting surrounding the notorious Daniel LaPlante. With a story that features seances, multiple murders, creepy suitors and an alleged invader dressed in a wedding dress hiding in a family's cupboard. It's not hard to see why this case has grown to horror movie-esque proportions.  Join Hannah and Suruthi as they work to separate fact from fiction, and discover that the truth is just as scary as the lies.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed and Happy Cupboard Day. Has it been two years? Yes, it has. Apparently, according to time and the calendar. And you guys actually spotted it before we did. I had the wrong day in my calendar. I just, I don't know, I just completely forgot what it was.

So for our newer listeners who maybe haven't listened from the very beginning, on the 9th of July, two whole years ago, we got locked in the violin cupboard in my old flat and we were stuck in there for nearly three hours in our pants on the hottest day of the year. I like how you say the violin cupboard like every house has one. You know, the violin cupboard. It was the cupboard under Hannah's stairs which had three violins in it just by chance like no no one who actually lived there played the violin people who would stay there would just leave their violins there it makes it sound like it was this like massively affluent renaissance house beautiful mansion yeah it was actually a council flat in Poplar

you just had very renaissancey people passing through by the sounds of it. I mean, evidently. Who's got three violins? Not me. I played the violin for all of like three months when I was 12 and gave up. Couldn't stand the teacher, Mrs Ford. She was just such a bitch. Maybe I just wasn't very good.

I feel like the violin's only a nice instrument to listen to if you're really fucking good at it. You've got to go through years of cat squealing to get there. But I was quite good at pushing myself to do things like that. I don't know why I gave up. I also played the cello, but I thought it was too big for me to carry around, so I gave that up. I just never have been very musically talented. And then I watched The Perfection on Netflix last weekend,

and I was like, I wish I could play the cello. It's too late for me now. It's too late. In the very early 90s, there was some sort of like violin prodigy lady who played an electric violin and I can't remember what her name was, but she was on top of the pops

and I remember watching that and being like, I want to play the violin and then did it for like six months and was fucking terrible and quit. It's hard. Musical instruments are hard. Props to anyone who violin. And then did it for like six months and was fucking terrible. It's hard. Musical instruments are hard. Props to anyone who can. I know we've laughed at people who play like the clarinet before. But I can play a bit of piano.

Oh, good. Right. Anyway, yes. So to celebrate Cupboard Day, we're giving you a bit of a cupboard-y episode. Kind of, sort of. The starting point is cupboard-y. It gets less cupboard-y as we go on. I I was gonna do this for a Halloween special back in the I think I don't know whether it was the second one or the first one we did but it's actually a bit of a tricky one because there's so many children involved a lot of the details of the first bit of the story which is the very

famous bit are a not readily available and what's out there is like riddled with lies. So to get through that bit is quite tough, which is why I didn't do it for that, but I have decided to tackle it this week. This story has attracted a lot of myths, and it's kind of become its own little urban legend. So it's been pretty difficult to find out what is true and what has been made up. The sources on this one, especially for the first half, aren't perhaps not the most reliable, but we've done our best to sort of string together

what we think is the closest to the truth. And it's not ideal, but you deserve the truth. And we've tried our best to find it. I also read that, you know that like, that sort of urban legend-y ghost story about the babysitter who's in a house and there's like a clown statue? Apparently, that story is based on this. The clown statue?

Yeah, there's like a babysitter in the house and she like rings the parents and she's like, oh, everything's fine, the kids are fine, but the clown statue is really freaking me out. And the parents are like, we don't have a clown statue, get out of the house. Oh, I love how, get out of the house. Because of all of the ominous things. That sounds like nothing but trouble, get the hell out of the house oh I love how get out of the house because of all of the ominous things that that sounds like nothing but trouble get the hell out of the house no I've only ever heard of the sort of the classic babysitter in the house on their own the call is coming from inside the house shenanigans it closely linked to that as Hannah said sort of I would say the first act most

definitely because this is an episode of two acts today. And I would say like the first half of the second act is very, very horror film-esque. Oh, yeah, definitely. Very much so. And to fit in with that, today we're starting off with a ghost story. This story starts in 1986 in Pepperell, Massachusetts. This is a pretty small town with pretty colonial vibes. I think we imagine it to be kind of like the one where Sabrina the Teenage Witch lived. And we mean the old one that we were watching when we were kids,

not the new one that, you know, with the madman girl who pissed off the satanic temple by allegedly nicking their statue and all that. So Massachusetts itself has a pretty witchy history and things are certainly going to get creepy today. Annie and Jessica Andrews lived in Pepperell with their dad Brian. Now Brian was a newly single parent. Really sadly the girl's mum had recently died of cancer and all three of the Andrews family were struggling to adjust to life without her. Annie and Jessica decided that they would hold a seance in the basement to try and speak to their mum. And I've read a few different versions of what happens next. And the most constant one that we

found was that Annie and Jessica took some of their mum's stuff down to the basement. Then they made their own Ouija board and lit some candles. And I think I've been thinking about this for a while. Maybe we should do like a Patreon bonus episode on the history of the Ouija board because spoilers, it's not as like ancient as it claims to be. Exactly. It was just like a toy made by the Hasbro company, wasn't it? Yeah.

You sound so sad. I am. It was originally to do with reading the other people in the room rather than, I think, we're going to get so many people now being like, well, actually, I didn't have time to sort of delve into the history of Ouija board for this episode, but there's enough nonsense in this one already. So let's keep that one for another time. Annie and Jessica go down to the basement

of their pepper roll home and started trying to make contact with their mum on the other side. But Brian, their dad, wasn't having any of this occult business happening under his roof. He put absolutely no stock in it. He just thought that his girls were handling the death of their mother badly. So he told them to stop what they were doing straight away and come upstairs, which the girls did. But what that means, if you buy into the whole seance Ouija board situation even a little bit, is that the girls didn't close their seance session

so whatever they contacted stayed in their house and apparently if you believe in it that is the number one rule if you don't say goodbye and you don't end the session whatever you have found will stay in your house or wherever you're conducting this and the other thing is even I mean if again if you buy into this even a little bit the idea that you can have any control is apparently not the case you're opening this portal apparently into the other world into the other side and just because you're trying to contact a specific past person doesn't mean you will you're probably just gonna get um hijacked by a bunch of demons right yeah i sort of get the impression impression that there's quite a lot of demoning in between actual people that you know, because they're like waiting for you.

They're waiting to pounce. They're waiting to pounce. It is not a safe server. You cannot make a safe connection. Well, my Ouija board has a firewall. I don't know about you. There you go. Stay safe out there, guys.

We may laugh, but sure enough, strange things started to happen in the Andrews' house. Both Annie and Jessica started to hear knocking coming from the walls. And around the same time, Annie received a phone call from a boy. And this boy told her that his name was Danny. He said that he'd seen Annie at a baseball game in town and he was so taken with her that he'd asked around until he'd managed to get her number. Weird to modern audiences maybe,

but this is the 80s, so maybe this isn't that weird. He could have looked up her number in the phone book. I definitely used to do that. I have really clear memories of just going through the phone book and ringing every house with the surname that I needed until you eventually get to the right one. Really? Yes. Who were you looking for that badly?

Oh, a boy that I liked. Wow. No, I never ever did that. I don't even remember ever using a yellow pages apart from to like, like the advert to stand on. I don't know. No, I definitely did. I definitely did. But I think because I went to girls and boys were separated. So like we weren't around boys all the time. This is the thing. All the boys I knew I saw every day. See, this is the thing. I think that's and also I went to school three towns over from where I lived. So it wasn't like they were just down the road. No, no, no, no. I guess so. I was going to quite creepily say, and I knew where all of my schoolmates who were boys lived.

I didn't have to look up anybody's number. You clearly had a better time than me at school. Not really. Well, we've aged ourselves quite considerably during this little conversation. But anyway, back to the case. The thing is, this must then have felt quite believable to Annie that this is how Danny had found her. And I guess Annie wasn't too bothered about Danny calling her house because he actually described himself as being tall, blonde and athletic. So when Danny asked Annie if he could

take her out and maybe get some ice cream with her, she was apparently really excited and said yes. This wouldn't be as good a story as it is if Danny was actually the tall, hand-egg American football player that he described himself to be. So the good news is for you, he was the exact opposite. After multiple phone calls with Annie over a series of weeks, Danny finally showed up at the Andrews family home. But he showed up, as Hannah just alluded to, very much not the tall, handsome young man that he claimed to be. When Annie opened her front door, she was met with a skinny, dark-haired kid who mumbled and shuffled. And he wasn't the best at making eye contact

either. His name was actually Danny, or Daniel LaPlante. But his first name was the only thing that he would ever tell Annie that would be true. He was dishevelled, his hair was dirty, and it looked like he hadn't taken a shower in days, possibly weeks. But despite all of this, Annie still agreed to go out with Danny. Very, very nice of her. I feel like it's just intense awkwardness, isn't it? Like he showed up at your house and... Yeah, he knows where you live also.

Yes, very intense. Not that you should just house and... Yeah, he knows where you live also. Yes, very intense. Not that you should just go out with someone because they know where you live. I'm just saying that in this context, she may have been quite intimidated. Yeah, I think it's hard to say no when someone's turned up at your house. So Danny and Annie do go out together and some accounts say that they went to a fair. Some people say that they went to get ice cream and stick to that story. But either way, the topic of the conversation on this date was pretty dark. Danny had lots of questions for Annie, specifically about her mother's death. He was very interested in the exact moment that her mother had died,

what she looked like when she died, and whether Annie had seen the light leave her mother's eyes as she died. I'm going to say not first date conversation topics. Probably not. No. I think, you know, steer clear of religion, politics and deaths in the family on the first one. I say that. I'm completely incapable of not talking about politics to anyone at any time. I think politics and religion absolutely spoken about on the first date.

You want to clear that shit out. But maybe steer clear of asking whether a beloved family member's eyes went dark after they died dead bodies in general just any any dead bodies i think maybe not i've spoken about dead bodies on first dates well i mean then there's no hope for you honestly i suppose it's quite hard for us to not what's what's your job exactly that's what i mean it's not out of context it's very much in us to not. What's your job? Exactly. That's what I mean. It's not out of context. It's very much in context. It's not about the one you found on your way. No.

You saw a foot sticking out of a bin. Exactly. But to be fair, if somebody told me that, I'd be like, that's super interesting. Again, it's all in the tone of the delivery, isn't it? If they're like giddy with excitement, maybe back away. If they're like, oh, it was just a really dark thing that happened to me, I'd be like, oh my God, tell me more. Oh God. Now anyway, this completely understandably for Annie, maybe we're alluding to the fact that for Hannah and I it might not be too much,

but for Annie it was too much. And she made her excuses and left this date very quickly. Annie decided that it would be best for her not to see Danny again. But we don't know whether she told him that or whether she ghosted. I'm sorry. No. I'm so sorry. No, don't.

If anyone is laughing, stop laughing immediately. Don't give it to her. Oh my God. This week has been so hard, guys. And I was so like, I was writing this. I was like, am I going to put this pun in? I'm putting the pun in. And I'm amazed it even made the final cut this morning as I was rereading.

But it did. So I hope you all appreciate it. So they never spoke again. Danny and Annie never went on another date. But the knocking in the walls of the Andrews' house continued. Annie and Jessica became increasingly convinced that whatever was in the walls was connected in some way to their mum. The knocking became so frequent that the sisters started to ask the presence questions and the force in the walls would respond with knocks.

This went on for a few weeks and then things in the Andrew house started to move around. It started small, but before long, pieces of furniture were moving from one side of the room to the other. And then objects started to disappear altogether. Jessica and Annie weren't so sure that whatever was in their house was their mother anymore. Brian, Daddy Andrews, was having absolutely none of this still. He was sure that the girls were playing tricks on him for attention and that there was nothing supernatural at work. The sisters obviously denied this, but the furniture kept moving and things kept going missing. I think on both sides that must have been incredibly frustrating. Oh, absolutely. I mean,

because the girls know that they're not doing this because, yes, give away, they're not doing this. And Brian absolutely is convinced that the girls are just dealing with the death of their mother in an incredibly messy way. So, yeah, it is so horror movie-esque, isn't it? Again, just to come back to that, like the idea that this is happening, definitely happening. No one believes you. And I feel like everyone has those memories from like stuff you did it when you're a kid that you got in trouble for that you did not do. And it still like fills me with rage. Like just like the sense of injustice of the whole thing.

Good. I'm glad you're dealing with this so well. So well rounded. Yeah. As Hannah said, you know, Brian got more and more frustrated because, yeah, he was completely convinced that the girls were just acting out instead of expressing their grief in a healthy way. So, very logically, he put Jessica and Annie into counselling, hoping that things would calm down. But the thing is, they only got worse. One evening, the knocking moved from the walls and started to come from the basement. So Jessica and Annie went down there to investigate,

taking a kitchen knife with them. As if you would go down there. Knife or no knife. I would have run away. You absolutely would. Do not lie. You would be down there in two seconds. How dare you lie to the people like that. I'm lying to myself. I have to pretend like I would protect myself in this situation. But the thing is, when the girls got down to the basement and turned the light on,

they saw a message written on the wall and it looked like it had been written in blood. And it said, I'm in your room. Come and find me. Okay. Whether I would have gone down into the basement or not at that point, I would have been out of that house like a fucking shot after I read that. There's no way. I wouldn't go to my room after reading that. My house now doesn't have a basement, but when I was at uni, like in my second year, we lived in this absolute shithole of a house, and there was a basement there. And we went down there on our first day, and it was just so fucking scary. It was just like me and four girls living in this house. And just on one wall, just someone had spray painted the word disco. Just imagine this. That's quite fun. At least they're not like ominous. They're like, let's have a party. I think people were having parties down there. But imagine this really dark, dingy, quite scary looking basement.

And then just one wall just has this very wobbly word disco spray painted on it it was quite sinister I think still we don't like going down into the the basement of my house my house is quite old it's like a Victorian house and um we have to go down there to put more money on the on the electric but like none of us like doing it And it also locks from the outside. Why do you need to lock it from the outside? Well, coming back to cupboard day, like why in your old flat was I able to go back and listen to the episode? But essentially, we went into this cupboard to try and prove the quality of our audio back in the day when we had no idea what we were doing. And I just said, wouldn't it be funny if I shut this door and it locked? It's an internal door. Why would that ever happen? Shut the door, click, and we're locked inside this room.

There's no door handle from the inside, only a handle on the outside. What sort of fucking sinister monster lived in that house that you would have an internal door that locked automatically and you could only open from the outside? Well, Tower Hamlets Council built it, so it's on them. Yeah, but somebody had taken the handle off the inside and like pasted over it. Yeah, that's true. In our basement now, we like make jokes that there are people, we call them the people,

the people that are down there. And we like make jokes about being left with the people all the time. And Matt was down there the other day, like getting something. And I was talking to him from the top of the basement stairs. And mid-sentence, he just goes, get off my leg. Oh, God. Your housemates are fun they really are you know they really really are god right anyway back to jessica and annie and so they were

like i said i would have been they were out of that house like a fucking shot and they waited for their dad to come home and when he did come home from work he was furious and you would be wouldn't you because it is a much more rational reaction to assume that your kids are just winding you up for some attention than to leap to the conclusion that there is a demon in your house. And it must have been, as Hannah said, like incredibly frustrating. We'll tell you now, the girls were not the ones to blame, even though that feels like the most logical explanation. But after this incident, things in the walls did seem to calm down. That is for a

while, until a few weeks later, when the knocking started up again. This time, it sounded like it was coming from Annie's room. So the girls went upstairs and saw another message on the wall. And this time it said, I'm back. Find me if you can. At this point, the girls ran out of the house and ran to their neighbor's house, and once again waited for their furious father to come home. When he did, Brian marched straight into the house despite his children begging him not to, and he found that the TV was turned up very loud, much louder than anyone would have been listening to it normally, and the girls were sure that they had not left it on when they left the house. But big man Brian was not going to let the TV scare him, not in his own house. So he

bashed up the stairs and went straight into Annie's room. And there he saw another message on the wall that read, marry me. And then he saw a figure standing on the other side of the room with his dead wife's wedding dress on, wearing her makeup and also wearing a blonde wig. It wasn't a woman, it was a boy. It was a boy wearing a wedding dress and he was carrying a hatchet in one of his hands. And then the boy in the wedding dress disappeared. The police were called to the house quickly afterwards and it was soon clear that the boy in the wedding dress was still in the house. There is no way he could have got out without someone seeing him. And it was also discovered that the messages that had been left on the walls of the house were not left in blood.

They were written in ketchup. Soon the police found a small cupboard. And different accounts will tell you different things. Some say that the cupboard was in Annie's room. Some say that it was under the stairs. But the important thing is that when this cupboard was opened, Danny LaPlante, Annie's little weirdo date buddy, was hiding inside. Danny was taken from the Andrews' house and arrested. And a little later, a further search of the Andrews' house was conducted. And police found evidence that Daniel LaPlante had spent

quite some time in the walls of the house and in their various cupboards. Some claim that he had even made his own tunnels in the walls of the house to make it easier to get around and answer questions with knocks. Now this is all a very good story and it's probably one that you've heard before if you are into the world of true crime. But we're sorry everyone because a story is all that it is. The only details I've even come close to confirming is that at the top end of 1987 in Pepperell, Massachusetts, Daniel LaPlante was waiting in a cupboard in a house of a family of three.

The family came home and LaPlante jumped out of the cupboard at them with paint on his face and carrying a hatchet. The paint on his face had a bit more of a Native American flair than a woman's makeup and the family managed to escape from him out of an upstairs window. Nobody was hurt. There are also some variations on the story where like Daniel LaPlante like has this massive like fist fight with Brian and he ties Annie up and then Annie manages to escape and like there are so many versions of it out there but in reality none of the family were harmed they all get out of the window pretty quickly. This is also tacked on I'm not 100% sure how true this bit is

but apparently two days later the police gained entry into the Andrews family home and found Daniel your plant hiding in the walls allegedly. So how much of the first story we told you is true, I have absolutely no idea. Maybe there are some details that are true and some that aren't. There are just so many different versions of it that I just, I really don't know what to believe. But I suspect that the less sensational version is much closer to the truth. So be careful with what you read on the internet. And I was amazed at just how many places present it as absolute fact. But the next bit of the episode, welcome to Act Two, is absolutely true. So truth only, hopefully, from here on out.

Welcome to the Truth Zone. After his cupboard dwelling incident, Daniel LaPlante was charged in Middlesex Superior Court with counts of kidnapping, armed assault, breaking and entering, larceny and malicious destruction of property. He was tried as a minor and sent to a juvenile detention centre where he remained until the 6th of October 1987. His mental state did not seem to be taken into account during this sentencing. Some sources will tell you that he was let out of the juvenile detention centre on a $100,000 bail bond, which I'm not sure if I believe, because if he was tried as a minor, bail would not have been an option. If he was tried as an adult, he wouldn't have been sent

to a juvenile detention centre. So it's a bit of a funny one. I suppose the only thing that could be true is perhaps he was being held in the juvenile detention centre awaiting trial. And then he gets out on a $100,000 bond and maybe he was going to be tried as an adult in that later thing. But I'm not sure. And also, we're going to get into his family situation in a second. I don't think anyone's got $100,000. But I mean, that's just a bit up for debate on that one. I'm not sure whether that bit is true or not,

but he was absolutely incarcerated in a juvenile detention centre until the 6th of October 1987. Now, when Daniel LaPlante was let out, he moved in with his mum Elaine and his stepdad David in Townsend, which is also in Massachusetts. It has a pretty similar vibe to Pepperell and it's just 11 minutes away in the car. As Hannah alluded to, Daniel LaPlante's home situation was less than ideal,

which honestly is made obvious by his propensity to hide in cupboards without his parents noticing or giving a shit. The details of the break-in at the Andrews family home are murky, and so are the records surrounding LaPlante's childhood. But the general consensus seems to have been that Daniel LaPlante was sexually abused by his biological father and by at least one other adult male. Now, LaPlante had a shitty time at school too.

It seems like nobody gave a single shit about him. He had extremely poor hygiene, which when you're at school and you're a kid, is your parents' responsibility. Come on. Like they're letting you leave the house like that. Exactly. It's neglect straight up. It's abuse and neglect. Yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely what it is.

Now, Laplante didn't have any friends at school, unsurprisingly, given, you know, his state, given the condition from where he was coming. It's all just a really sad story. And many of his classmates also described him as being creepy and weird. He was also dyslexic, which doesn't help. I think, obviously, and this is a stigma and people like to pretend it's not true. But in my experience, like if you are dyslexic, you will come across so many people in your life that think you are stupid. And this is the 80s. So there would have been even less understanding around dyslexia than there is now. And even now, it's not fantastic.

Like, I would never, ever, ever in a thousand years put that I was dyslexic on a job application. Ever. Like, you're supposed to be allowed to, but I wouldn't. Well, hopefully you'll never, ever, ever have to do a job application ever again. That is the plan. I intend to go through my entire life never doing another job application and never taking another exam. Exactly. Wouldn't it be exciting if we never, ever had to update our CVs ever again?

Yeah, that is my only aim. So, Daniel, shit time at home, shit time at school. And such concern was raised about Daniel at his high school that he was sent to see a psychiatrist. That psychiatrist was supposed to tackle Daniel's problems with hygiene and social awkwardness. But what he actually did was abuse Laplante further sexually so that's three adult males by the time he's in high school this is what I mean by it's like such a fucking horror film it's like the girl with the dragon tattoo or something like he's got nowhere to go finally has somebody that maybe could help him and then he also fucking sexually abuses him and we're not making excuses for. We're not going to for what goes on to happen.

But he didn't have a chance. He didn't have a fucking chance, I don't think. As shit starts to go. Who could he trust? It's a pretty shocking one. Yeah. But in between all the sexual abuse that his psychiatrist was raining down on him, this psychiatrist did manage to diagnose Daniel with ADHD.

And I just feel like he really must have been thinking that absolutely no grown-ups would help him, so he has no one to turn to. And to add to this shit sandwich, Daniel LaPlante had multiple head injuries. It would later be detailed in court that his behaviour notably changed after his head was smashed into a lamp as a teen. It's like how to make a serial killer. Yeah, it really is. Every adult male who comes into contact with him sexually abuse him.

Let no one give a fuck about him. And also, just smash him in the head occasionally. And we're not excusing what he did, no matter how much of the Andrews story is true. And I'm certainly not excusing what happens next. Daniel LaPlante started stealing from other people's houses. And by the time he was 17, he was all caught up in whatever actually happened at the Andrews house in January of 1987. After he was released from the juvenile detention centre, Daniel LaPlante got straight back into stealing things

and breaking into people's houses. In November, he stole two handguns from one of his neighbours, and it wasn't long before he used them. On the 1st of December 1987, so just two months after Daniel LaPlante was released, 34-year-old Townsend resident Andrew Gustafsson had a feeling that something was wrong. Andrew was one of two lawyers that practised in Townsend, and he had just scored a big client, or closed a big deal, or whatever it is that lawyers do that they get excited about. So he wanted to call his wife Priscilla to tell her the good news. So at about 3.45 in the afternoon, Andrew called her and she didn't pick up. He called the house three more times and she didn't answer the phone. And this was extremely out of character. Priscilla was usually at home with their two children, Abigail

and William, at that time of day. Priscilla was a nursery school teacher so she was always home by mid-afternoon and their kids were young too. Abigail was seven and William was just five so they would have already been home from school too. Abigail was seen at around 3.30 walking home from the school bus that had just dropped her off at the end of the road. The family were already a little bit on edge because their home had been broken into a month before. Nothing expensive had been taken, only like a cordless telephone, two cable television boxes and a TV remote control and some coins from a Liberty's silver dollar collection. So nothing that anyone was going to lose any sleep over. But it was enough to put a nagging fear in the back of Andrew's mind. So Andrew decided to go home, knowing that something was very wrong. He was even more sure of this when he got home at about 5pm and saw that his wife's car

was in the driveway, and all of the lights were off, and that the house was totally silent. So Andrew walked into the kitchen and called out for Priscilla, but heard no answer. Then he called his neighbour to check to see if they'd seen her. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn

when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up.

But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus.

They hadn't seen her all day. Then Andrew went into the master bedroom and saw his wife lying face down on their bed. She had a pillow over her head and she'd clearly been dead for some time. Her skin was grey. Andrew then called 911 and while he was on the phone, he realised that there were two bullet holes in the pillow over his dead wife's head. Police arrived to search the house and later the Boston Globe reported that Priscilla had been anally and vaginally raped. She was also three months pregnant. During their search of the house, the police also found the couple's children, Abigail and William.

They had both been drowned and had been placed in separate bathrooms in the house. The baths had been drained. Abigail, who was very nearly eight years old, displayed cuts, bruises and a blunt force trauma to her head, as if she had tried to fight off the intruder. Her neck also showed signs of compression, as if she had been strangled, before she was drowned. When Andrew Gustafson was asked why he hadn't looked for his children before calling the police, he said that it was because he had been too afraid of finding them dead. The master bedroom where Priscilla was found was investigated by Carolyn LeClaire,

a chemist from the Department of Public Safety who found semen on the bedspread and a bit of a condom that had been left on the floor. There was also a knotted brown sock that was covered in saliva found on the floor, suggesting that it had been used as a gag. A necktie, another sock, stockings and tights that had also been knotted were found in the bedroom too. There was also an almost full beer in the bedroom. They had been taken from the Gustafsson kitchen fridge. In the kitchen bin, there were several pieces of paper that had been ripped out of a pornographic magazine.

And guess who lived just moments away from the Gustafsson home? Correct. Our little cupboard-dwelling escape artist, Daniel LaPlante. When Andrew Gustafsson arrived at his home on that day, Daniel LaPlante had been at a birthday party with his six-year-old niece, but he had no alibi for earlier that day. The day after Priscilla and her two children had been found dead in their home,

police questioned Daniel LaPlante in the local library where he had been studying. Or so he said. I feel like that's such a, like, I'm going to do the most innocent thing I could possibly do on the next day so they won't suspect me. I'll just go to the library and read a book.

It is like so 80s horror movie alibi. And also the other thing about Townsend is like it's incredibly small and there had been a lot of break-ins going on. So I'm pretty sure that Daniel O'Plant was like very much on their radar as it was. Yeah. I mean, it's a town with just two lawyers. Like it's tiny. So the interview in the library didn't give the police enough evidence for an arrest, but it did raise enough suspicion for a follow-up interview at Laplante's Townsend home that he shared with his mum, his stepdad and his brother Stephen. As soon as Daniel Laplante saw the police car outside his house, he just ran. He jumped over

his porch railing in full view of the police and ran off into the woods. And then a full-blown manhunt ensued that lasted for 48 hours. It was assumed that Laplante was still armed and could be looking for his next victim. Even though Laplante was just 17, the police were sure that he was capable of anything. And this search was massive. We're talking helicopters, dogs and almost 50 officers involved, which for a town with a population of just under 9,000 people is pretty big news. Daniel LaPlante was found on the 3rd of December hiding in a bin. He really does love the like small spaces. He likes confined spaces. Maybe it's like a womb thing. He really

likes them. Or maybe like, he does sound like he was incredibly neglected and abused. Maybe they just shut him up in small spaces when he was a kid. And that's why. Maybe, yeah. And he was found, as we said, hiding in a bin in Lyttelton, which is about a half an hour drive away from Townsend. He was thought to be unarmed, but when he got to the police station, he admitted to having a gun stashed away in his crotch, which seems like a high-risk place to be storing a gun, to be honest. And why did they search him before they get him in the car? This part I don't understand. It's weird. It's not like, I don't know, I was going to say something really graphic, like the girl in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's not like it's...

No, it can't go up anywhere. Yeah, I mean... Well... Anyway, LePlant had hardly kept a low profile. During his 48 hours on the run, he had broken into another house in Pepperell and kidnapped a woman, stolen her car, stolen a gun, and assaulted the woman. LePlant was charged with three counts of murder in the first degree and his family home in Townsend was searched. The house was of real state. Both Daniel and his brother were sleeping on mattresses on the floor and the.22 caliber gun that he had used to kill Priscilla Gustafson was found in the glove compartment of a Jeep Cherokee at the house and all of the items that

had been taken from the Gustafson home the month before were found hidden in a TV cabinet. It would appear that Daniel LaPlante had been planning his attack on the family for some time. The clothes that his brother confirmed he had been wearing on the day he murdered the Gustafsson family were found in his house. One of the socks was wet and the other had a strand of Abigail Gustafsson's hair in it. And obviously it's significant that it's wet because he drowned the children. Yeah. As you can tell, the case against Daniel LaPlante was pretty solid. Like, he doesn't really have anywhere to go, I don't think.

And the trial began in 1988. Judge Barton, who presided over the trial, called it the worst ever case that he had dealt with that involved children. The leader of the prosecution, Tom Riley, argued that LaPlante had initially returned to the Gustafson home to The leader of the prosecution, Tom Riley, argued that Laplante had initially returned to the Gustafsson home to steal more of their stuff, but had been surprised when Priscilla returned home, so he resolved to kill all of the witnesses to his crime. Laplante's defence attorney, Robert Shetekoff, called the case entirely circumstantial.

Which it kind of is. There are no witnesses. But they found all the stuff in his house. Yeah, but no DNA. Nothing like that. So like, it is a circumstantial case. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, but it is circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence is still evidence. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I just haven't said that in a while. You know, all of the witnesses are dead. But even despite all of that, LaPlante pled not guilty and told the court that he had been in a dreamlike state during the murders.

But LaPlante's mental state was not found by the court to have any bearing on his actions, because he knew what he was doing was wrong. He was 18 when the trial took place, and he didn't show any emotion, much less remorse, throughout the three week trial. And he was tried as an adult, even though he was 17 when he committed it, they tried him fully as an adult. And a jury of 16 found him guilty of three counts of murder. Daniel LaPlante was never charged with rape or sexual assault in the case of Priscilla Gustafson. And I haven't been able to find who Seaman was found at the scene. But the fact that I can't find it makes you think that it probably wasn't Daniel LaPlante.

But everything you read about this, even like contemporary articles will say that she was raped. So is that just another case of like, hearsay spinning out of control? And like what the papers actually say is like, there was evidence that priscilla had been sexually assaulted but if laplante wasn't charged with it how much evidence could there really have been i mean if there was semen found a bit of a condom found and they would have done even back then in the 80s i assume like they would have done an examination of her body and if they had been like all of those things matched and that i don't know could they have matched semen in the 80s to a person? Or could they only tell if it was the same blood type back then?

Yeah. It's the fact check fairy. Hannah is absolutely 100% wrong here. DNA testing was first used in a court of law in 1986 in the UK. So it's very unlikely that it would have been available in Massachusetts in 1987.

Hannah, try harder, be better. Now having said all of this, Laplante was charged with assault and kidnapping of the woman whose car he had stolen during his police chase. And with threatening a family of three with a hatchet and peperol back in 1986. And I think that tells you which of our stories from earlier is true. Massachusetts doesn't have the death penalty, but Judge Barton was convinced that Daniel LaPlante deserved it. So he sentenced LaPlante to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole,

which in effect is a death sentence. So Tom Riley, the lead prosecutor, confirmed that he thought that Daniel LaPlante needed to die in prison. LaPlante appealed in 1993, but with no luck, he is still fighting his conviction and causing trouble from inside. In 2000, LaPlante was put in segregation, which is just a fancy word for solitary confinement. And therefore, he was not allowed access to the prison's law library. So he decided to sue the Board of Prisons. That seems like a reasonable grievance to me. Because he's fighting his appeal. He's trying to, he's not fighting his appeal, he's trying to build an appeal to fight his conviction. Just immediately

put him into solitary confinement. And boom, he doesn't have access to any more books. Yeah. And I also feel like it's very easy for prison wardens to say like, oh, we're putting you in solitary confinement for your own good. And so he's fighting this. And he also added that his First Amendment rights were being restricted because he was not allowed to have the porn that was being sent to him. I was completely staggered by this but apparently in prison like in that particular prison policy the prison he was in I don't know whether it pertains to the whole of Massachusetts or even the whole of the United States I don't know but in this case apparently prison policy permits commercial erotica. Whose job is it to decide what's commercial and what's not is there like a board of like prison porn posters what is that it's crazy i mean it must just mean like straight missionary

i don't know missionary only no eye contact but is it like oh no i think i can see a rope in the corner of that picture not allowed i'm afraid It's just like total mainstream porn, I guess, which is very interesting. Who is deciding? Like, whose job is that? That's crazy. They were just like sat flicking through it and they're just like, nope.

Yeah. And amazingly, in January 2003, LaPlante won this case and his attorneys were awarded almost $100,000 and LaPlante was given $450, which probably goes quite a long way in prison. He's got nothing else to do apart from cause trouble. He's in there for the rest of his life.

He kicked up a fuss about being a practising Satanist and said that the prison weren't giving him the proper religious freedom he had a right to because they weren't giving him access to certain items that he needed to be doing Satanism properly. And I don't know what those are. But he didn't get particularly far with this one and he gave up pretty quickly. But it's not over. In 2017, Daniel LaPlante was 46 years old. He went in at 18, remember. He applied for a resentencing. He was 17 when he committed the murders. And some of you might remember that the Supreme Court in the States ruled recently that minors being sentenced to life without parole is unconstitutional.

This does not have to be enforced retroactively, especially when the defendant has committed multiple crimes like Daniel LaPlante. And we've talked about it before. There's a whole TV series about people who were convicted and put in prison for the rest of their life as minors. And now that isn't happening. It's a case by case basis whether they can be resentenced or not. Daniel LaPlante did want to try use this ruling to his advantage and have his sentence converted to three concurrent life sentences rather than the three original consecutive ones. This would obviously mean that he would be eligible for parole after about 30 years in prison, which would put his release date in 2017. LaPlante's lawyers argued that he had been rehabilitated,

he felt remorse, and that his abusive upbringing was out of his control and directly affected his actions, and that every prisoner deserved a meaningful opportunity to re-engage with society. I think I kind of agree with that. Yeah, so do I. He was 17.

I don't know if he's been rehabilitated. I don't know if he now feels remorse. But I do believe that rehabilitation, we've talked about this before, should be what we're aiming for in prisons. It's not just about retribution. And I do believe that his abusive upbringing was out of his control

and probably did directly affect his actions. And I do believe that every prisoner deserves a meaningful opportunity to re-engage with society. I guess there are challenges like multiple crimes, but... Yeah, and the judge even says she's like, it's not like he did one thing that caused three deaths. He killed three people individually. Exactly. And that should be taken into account.

Absolutely. Because this is violent crime in three individual circumstances. Now Merit Schneiper. What a name. Merit Schneiper. Who represented Laplante in the hearing asked the court, is 45 years too much to serve for a juvenile homicidal defendant before you're pushing up against the functional equivalent of a life without parole. Yeah, she's basically saying like 45 years without the

possibility of parole is a long time. Priscilla Gustafson's sister, Christine Morgan, told the press that this re-sentencing hearing was, quote, like reliving the murders all over again. It's life-changing again. And I do think the idea of, you know, taking a 17 year old, taking an 18 year old, putting them in prison for life without parole, what hope do they have? We talked about this back in the Robert Maudsley case. People who are in their life, like life means life, three consecutive life sentences. What hope do they have to try and re-engage in anything and try to even want to rehabilitate themselves? I agree with what Merit Schneiper is saying, this idea of doing that is a functional life sentence.

And what end does it serve? What purpose does it serve? I don't know. It's complicated. I do accept that. The hearing was overseen by Superior Court Judge Helene Kazajian, who agreed with Christine Morgan, Priscilla's sister, that Mr LaPlante had not been rehabilitated. And then she sentenced him to the maximum possible punishment, meaning that Daniel LaPlante will not be eligible for parole for another

15 years. So that's 45 years from the date of his original conviction, and his parole date will therefore be 2032. And Helene found this punishment to be warranted because, quote, Mr. LaPlante committed three distinct and brutal murders. He killed a 33-year-old pregnant mother and her five and seven-year-old children. He left a family and a community devastated. And I thought this was really interesting. So the prosecution attorney was called Crystal Lyons. And she said, the only thing that the court need to provide

is a meaningful opportunity for release, not an opportunity for meaningful release. And I thought that was really, really interesting. All the burden that is on the court is that an opportunity will come at some point. You can't argue that it's pointless because he'll be 89 when he gets out. That's not what the law says, which I thought was really smart. And she says there is no guarantee for any quality fulfillment of life for anybody, whether they're incarcerated or not. You can't promise that to a person. Andrew Giffstustin died in 2014.

And apparently, I've seen this reported in a couple of places, but I don't promise that to a person. Andrew Giffstustin died in 2014. And apparently, I've seen this reported in a couple of places, but I don't know if I believe it. But apparently, he said on his deathbed, don't ever let him out. He should die in prison. And he might get his wish. Daniel LaPlante is currently in the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater, which is actually for sex offenders. It's not really a prison. It's like a special medical treatment centre. And apparently, according to the Boston Globe, Daniel LaPlante requested to be moved there in 2016, which may seem like an odd move, but maybe life's easier in there than in real prison, especially if you're in solitary confinement. Yeah, I would have thought so. So yeah, that is a bit of myth busting into the story of Daniel LaPlante. I reckon most of

our listeners have probably heard the first act of this story before. We are sorry to ruin it for you, but you do deserve to know the truth. And this is as close to the truth as I think we can ever get. So yeah, thanks for listening. And happy cupboard day. Yeah, happy cupboard day. As ever, if you would like to keep us out of cupboards and keep us moving in a much better trajectory in terms of our... Buy tour tickets. Buy tour tickets, exactly. The link to buy those tickets is in the episode description.

It's all over social media. Come join us. We would love to see you there. Apart from that, you can follow us on all the social medias at RedHandedThePod. We're on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and you can also go that one step further and help support the show with some hard, cold cash. And you can do that at patreon.com slash redhanded. And here are some lovely people that have done that this week. So we've got Shona Young. Thank you, Sarah Kay, Sue Rains-Colin, Francesca Bellingham, Diane Trapp, Caitlin Bergstein, Selina Hammett,

Amanda J. Jancy, Louise Stinchcomb, Jay Reynolds, Tracy, Mimi, Kaylee Ambrose, Lauren Carden, Natasha, Julia, Kelly Martinez, Megan, Sophie, Julia Schlutz, Schultz. Schultz. Schultz. I was doing quite well until then. Sarah Turner, Bailey Milne, Michaela Dykes. Michael. Oh, my God. You go.

You go. You go. You take it. I can't. I'm tired. Christy Dare, Catherine, Shannon, Elise Haplin, Emily Morrow-Fick, Natasha Stark, Chelsea Wheeler, Jan, Ben Jarrett, Leslie Christie, DeBurco. Jan.

What did I say? No, you went to say Jan when it was Ben Jarrett. I enjoyed that. Ben Jarrett, sorry. Laura Dawson, Miss Katrina Beattie, Hannah Sloan, Fru Hagrum's daughter, Laura Adams, Megan White, Sam Kearney, Nina Miller, Leslie White, Kelly Mantic, Siobhan Cotter, Heath Hall, Rebecca Coombs, Emily Amberby, Brian Kyle McCord,

Amber Green, Rebecca Solomon, Sydney, Sarah Graham, Tab Spangler, I'm sure we've had you before, Tab Spangler, Emily Clare, Larissa Solovjo. Sorry. Sarah Reichart. Leila Nicholas. Jacqueline Mogul. Jamie Horne.

Rebecca Wilton. And Elizabeth Morris. Thank you all so much for supporting the show. You are the best. But it would be better if you bought some tour tickets. Yeah. I also really enjoy the person whose surname is Mantic. Imagine if their first name was like Rome-y and everyone called them Rome for short.

Romantic. Anyway. And you told me off for a pun earlier. Bloody hell. That's not a pun. Anyway, thank you guys so much. We bloody love you. We're so glad we're not in the cupboard anymore.

And that's all thanks to you and all of you lovely Patreon people and people who buy tour tickets. So we will see you next week with another episode. See you later. Bye. Bye. Transcribed by — corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985,

they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time if all goes to plan we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha

exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.