Donald Connery, another long time supporter of Richard Lapointe, wrote an article for the Hartford Courant. It is worth reading especially this part:
“… the forthrightness of retired Manchester police captain Joseph Brooks. His detectives lured Lapointe to headquarters on false pretenses on July 4, 1989, and got him to agree that he must be guilty. Brooks believed then, as did virtually everyone else in the law, that no one confesses to a crime he didn’t commit unless deranged or physically tortured..”
Even so, Brooks questioned the quality of the confessions and the absence of confirming evidence. Instead of arresting Lapointe that night, he let him go home. He would proceed only on an arrest warrant signed by a prosecutor and a judge. They did not share his misgivings, or order an expanded investigation, so Lapointe’s fate was sealed.
“Richard’s conviction has always troubled me,” Brooks told me recently. “I knew him around town as a simple, harmless dishwasher. The whole thing made no sense. In the last few years I have studied the old files and every case document I could find. My inescapable conclusion is that Richard had nothing to do with the murder of Bernice Martin.”
It is great to hear this officer’s frank thoughts. It would even be better if police would admit they tricked him, interrogated him without legal counsel for more than nine hours, and that they secretly wiretapped and intimidated Lapointe’s then-wife Karen.
You can read all about the investigation in this post “Who really killed Mrs. Bernice Martin?” It also has pictures, an analyses of the evidence and missed evidence, and hints at who might have been responsible.
I am convinced that Richard did not murder his then-wife’s grandmother. Now let’s hope that on Monday, the judge will find enough question marks to grant a new trial. Connery’s article is here.