Crime of the Truest Kind
Massachusetts and New England true crime, local history, advocacy-focused podcast - the things that happen here. Created and hosted by Boston radio personality, Anngelle Wood (WFNX, WBCN, WZLX); each episode walks you through a local crime story and the people and places involved.
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Crime of the Truest Kind
EP 59 | Stranger Than Fiction: The Truth About The Crimes of Daniel LaPlante, Townsend, Massachusetts, with author Joe Turner
This is the follow-up to the last two episodes. When I say "stranger than fiction" I mean it's so weird that you cannot make this shit up, yet lots of info shared online is just that, made up.
He's the boy in the walls. That's part of the story. But what is the story? Like most cases I research for the show, it's never what it appears on the surface. There is always more to the story, more information to find, to dig into to tell the story properly. When I started to read about the Gustafson family murders in 1987, then what happened to the Bowens of Pepperell the year before, I realized that little about the person responsible and the case - particularly the Bowen case - was factual. It is all made up rubbish.
It has taken me some time to sort it all out, the case of Daniel LaPlante, the teenage boy whose crimes went from outlandish to unspeakable. The boy in the wall graduated to murder.
In this episode, episode 59, we discuss graphic topics of murder, sexual assault, stalking, and something we now call phrogging. But in 1986, a teenage boy was hiding in a crawl space in someone's house for months.
I speak to writer Joe Turner about the case he's been researching for years for his book about the case, The Boy In The Walls, and we go over quite a few pieces of erroneous information about the life and times of Daniel LaPlante, teenage tyrant and murderer, whose run lasted from 1986-1987 in Townsend and Pepperell, Massachusetts - two small towns on the New Hampshire border, where I have heard people say “outside Boston” when referring to the towns and their locations. Outside, yes, by about 50 miles.
I learned about Daniel’s paternity and dark things about the man he called his father, about Daniel’s reported sexual abuse (and what we have blame for his very bad behavior), what really happened in the walls of the Bowen home over the course of several months in 1986, and what connection Andrew Gustafson had to Daniel Laplante before the murders of his family in 1987.
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Music included in episodes from Joe "onlyone" Kowalski, Dug McCormack's Math Ghosts and Shredding by Andrew King
Well, hello, my name is Anngelle Wood and this is Crime of the Truest Kind. Thank you to everyone who came to faces brewing in Malden for our live show. I have just gotten some audio and video that I have not reviewed, but if it is decent I will share it in the feed. Thank you to Emily Sweeney from the Boston Globe Cold Case Files. Thank you to all of you who showed up, some of whom had never heard the podcast before, so I hope you've listened.
Anngelle Wood:This is going to be a long episode and here's why Episode 57 and 58 have been about towns in Massachusetts and peppermint Massachusetts, two major happenings in 1986 and 1987. The perpetrator in these cases is a teenager named Daniela Plant, who has been arrested, charged, convicted and is in prison for these crimes. But what isn't known is the real story, particularly to what went down at the Bowens in Pe Pepperell massachusetts in 1986. There's so much misinformation online about this case and there's a lot of reasons for that, which we will talk about. I spoke to author Joe Turner, who I talked to you about in the last episode. He has written the book the Boy in the Walls due out at some point. It has been delayed to no fault of author Joe Turner. The book is about the Daniela Plant cases from 1986 and 87 in Townsend and Peppermint, massachusetts, two small towns on the New Hampshire border. Now I've heard people say outside Boston when referring to these towns in their location. Yeah, about 50 miles outside Boston. I spoke to Joe Turner who has been researching this case and has spoken to the Bowen girls now women Tina, kathy and Karen. He has spoken to members of the LaPlant family, friends from Townsend, all of whom have never really discussed Daniel or these cases from the last 35 plus years. I needed to clear some things up and I have learned a lot.
Anngelle Wood:In this episode episode 59, we will discuss graphic topics murder, sexual assault, stalking, something we now call frogging. But in 1986, a teenage boy was hiding in a crawl space in someone's house for months and there's a lot going on. Here we learn about Daniel LaPlante's paternity. We learn very dark things about the man he called his father. We learn the real story about Daniel's reported sexual abuse, what really happened in the walls of the Bowen home over the course of several months in 1986. And I learned for the first time what connection Andrew Gustafson had with a young Daniel LaPlante prior to his family's murder in 1987. We had a very long conversation, more than two hours, and he's in the UK, so it was likely edging into the middle of the night for him.
Anngelle Wood:We have a lot of ground to cover, but before I do that, I want to remind you Thursday, march 7, my next live show Off Cabot, beverly, massachusetts. I don't really have a proper title for this episode. Ai would probably say separating facts from fiction in the dark story of Daniel LaPlante in a small Massachusetts town, or something like that. I want to thank Joe Turner for his time. His website is joeturnerbookscom. He does plan a trip to the US and if he does we'll do a show. So get a snack, go to the bathroom, get another cup of coffee. This is a long one. How did you get on this? I know there's a couple of New England cases that you've been really paying a lot of attention to.
Anngelle Wood:How did you learn about Daniel LaPlant, for starters?
Joe Turner:It's quite strange. I first learned about the case a long time ago. I was talking like 15 years ago. I remember reading little snippets about it back in the day on forums. About seven years ago I was writing for a website, a true Chrome website. The editor just let me write about whatever I wanted, any case that I wanted. I always had the LaPlant case in the back of my mind back then. So I thought I know I'll cover that story because there's not many sources about it. So I'll cover that story, based on all the sources I could find online and the one documentation that had been made about it. So I wrote up like a definitive, the most comprehensive online source of the case, put it on this website and then I just forgot about it. I thought that's it really.
Joe Turner:But somehow the article made its way to the people of Townesend and Pepperot and then I was contacted by a bunch of people that were close to the case, like I was contacted by the police officers that arrested Dan's old friends, some of his old teachers, some of the victims, and they all sort of reached out to me and said oh, I've got a in-sauce into this story. Do you want to hear it? And at the time I wasn't that invested in the story because I wasn't too close to it. And then the more I heard their stories, the more I was like, okay, this is a lot different to what is reported everywhere else. And it was weird because everybody involved in the story thought that only their part of the case had been like embellished or missed out, but really everyone's part of the story had was missing, certain elements that were never reported and stuff. And I put it all together and it became this huge thing that was just completely different from what was reported elsewhere and I thought, okay, I've really got something here.
Joe Turner:And then, as I dug deeper in, I made friends with a lot of people. I'm like, weirdly, a lot of Dan's old friends are named my friends. I'm pretty close to the victims that he stalked Bowen girls. I talk to them all the time. So the officers that arrested him and it's like I felt a sort of kinship with them and I felt a duty to they were nice enough to share these horrific details with me. So I felt I had a duty to honor them and put them in a format where where we could all process them in a real non-exploitative format, and I wanted to do it for them because it was for them. It felt like an exorcism too, I believe, like the amount of people that said to me oh, I haven't spoken about this in 30 years. There must have been 10, 20 people that said that. So I felt like it was the right thing to do, put it in a book, put it out there and give them a sense of closure in a way.
Anngelle Wood:Any amount of researching, googling etc. Is so confounding and I'm sure you found all of that at the start of this To put it in a timeline. So I started with the Townsend case, with the Gustiffs and family, and then of course we know that there's the prequel, if you will, with the Bowen family. That sort of led up to the events of what happened with the Gustiffs and family. Why is the information so convoluted? Does it start with the fact that the family is at least the girls involved were minors? Is that where it begins? Why it's so convoluted and so difficult to find factual information?
Joe Turner:Well, I don't think it does start with the Bowen's. I think it started with the press at the time, because I've got articles from 1986 when it was all reported. But it was reported that they couldn't mention the girls' names at the time because they were all minors. So it was like a local girl, a local family. And even then, if from 1986 the details were still very distorted at the time the first chapter of my book I'd point out that one newspaper said Dan was dressed as a native Indian. The exact same day another newspaper reported that he was dressed as a ninja and then the exact same day someone reported that he was dressed with a different kind of face paint on. So they started right from the beginning. So immediately they didn't have a solid foundation for facts. How that happened I don't know. I'm guessing it's just a word of mouth from around police precinct. I'm guessing individual officers heard things from the officers that arrested Dan and then he got passed through down the line broken telephone I guess and then journalists just reported whatever they heard and I'm guessing it started that way.
Joe Turner:The Bowen family did speak to the press once or twice but I don't think they lied about anything. I think they told all the facts that they could remember. Now we have to remember that they were 16, 15 and nine years old, so their memories might not have been as solid as the 30-year-olds. Even today they still remember the facts as it was 36 years ago. So I don't think they lied at all. I'm guessing it's just a case of miscommunication or, at worst, journalists just trying to spice things up, just trying to add a little bit of flavour to the proceedings, because back in the 80s it wasn't as regulated as it is today, so people could just say whatever they wanted.
Joe Turner:And also there's the element that Thames and Pepperall are small Thames, everybody's business. And there's a chance that some of the journalists just spoke to that guy down the road, the guy that knows the Bowens, and he heard that oh, dad just doesn't injure in the closet. Could have just been that. That's my personal theory. I don't know 100% where it all came from, but that's how it started and then, weirdly, over the years it just got worse. There's just been more and more misinformation coming out and honestly I don't know where that stuff come from, because the Bowens never spoke about it till recently. Again, I assume it's just people from Thames and people that kind of knew had heard of the case or knew a guy that knew a guy that knew Dad and he heard this happen in one of the houses and he just came from there. So you know it's a real fertile ground for just lies.
Anngelle Wood:It's extraordinary. And you know I'm not too terribly far away from this area and I realize how small and rural that it is and I'm always looking at maps and seeing the distances and you know, west Elm Street to Saunders Road and etc. And then looking at the distance from where Daniel LaPlante actually lived to where the Bowens house was, it was really far away. So was he walking back and forth Like? I have so many questions about how this played out. Even some of these little questions, like did you ever learn how Daniel LaPlante was getting back and forth to the Bowens home and how long? Because he was there for a considerable amount of time. It was determined right, yeah.
Joe Turner:First question he was getting there by bike. Usually he was eight miles and maybe it was eight miles of. It wasn't like a, it was. It was mostly a straight road from Dan's house to the Bowens house in Perkall Towns and Perkall it was, there was once main street, you know goes all the way through both towns and Dan was mostly getting there by bike.
Joe Turner:But of course Dan wasn't, he didn't go home every night, like he didn't go in the Bowens house and go home. He'd sometimes he'd stay around, he'd stay with friends, he'd sleep rough stuff like that. And there were a few other abandoned, so not abandoned. There was a couple of houses nearby the Bowen house that were in mid construction, like there's a couple of wealthy families were building their own houses and he used to hide out in there because there was no builders there at night. It was just a free roaming place and no one would pay. So he would hide out in there and that's usually how he would get to and from the Bowen house, either biking or sort of hanging around for several days and doing his stalking stints in between. You know.
Anngelle Wood:How did he get in there? How long did he stay there? Like, what were you able to confirm is is fact.
Joe Turner:He was, from my maths and from what Tina tells me, he was living in the house between March 86 and December 86. So that's around eight, nine months. How often he was there he's up for debate, like you don't know. He wasn't there every day and there were periods. There were like weeks, weeks at a time, when he wouldn't be there, like usually in school holidays, for some reason. You think it'd be the other way around. You think you'd be there during the school holidays, but during the school holidays he wasn't. The girls said there were less and less noises in the house and he took an extended break during the summer, for some reason, during the summer holidays he wasn't there much at all. But it was around eight or nine months of I'm sorry, I mean March the year, about eight, nine months, and he was in and out regularly.
Joe Turner:During that time Hair, we was getting in is this annoyed me. This was actually what first drew me to the case, because when someone says you're hiding in the walls, that asks more questions than it answers, you know. So I was like right, is it? Any journalist with integrity would say hang on, hang on. How exactly does that happen? Because that's not, you know, it doesn't stay a whole lot. So that's what drew me into it. And then the next question was how does someone get into your house without you knowing? Now, here in the UK we have our houses are quite tight, like even the big houses are quite tight, so if I hear someone at my next door, I can hear them, you know. So I can hear people in the street on my off, but so I don't know if it's a British or an American, like cultural difference. But there was someone getting your house without you hearing. You know, surely you'd hear something somewhere.
Joe Turner:But the anticlimactic answer, unfortunately, is that down just walked in. There were two doors into the Bowen house and he took one when no one was around and of course it was Lauren Street. Is the houses of space that evenly, people aren't going to say someone coming and going, and they didn't lock the doors. So the unfortunate answer is he just walked in. Now, if this was a horror movie, that explanation wouldn't fly, but the reality is that it's pretty disappointing answer. That's what he did.
Joe Turner:Yeah, he was just coming in, he was, he had to come. He most went into the front door because they had a split level home the bedrooms upstairs and their living room and basement were downstairs. He could go to the front door, go downstairs into the basement, into his hiding space, and then he stayed there and he knew the schedules of the girls. He knew Frank, the father he was. He was rarely there anyway, because he worked so hard, because his single parents and he owned a hotel nearby, so he was never there. So he was. You know, the adult in the house was, uh, wasn't aware of this intrusion, uh, and Dan was just smart enough to to know how to play the game and he was smart enough to know how to be shadow and he was.
Anngelle Wood:How much of the story that has been reported I know it's probably a minuscule percent at this point how much of the interference, this mysterious interference, was the family experiencing? I know there's the. There's the story about how the girls tried to, for fun, contact their deceased mother and then noises started to happen and they started to get freaked out and they were subsequently messages being left around the house. How much of that is filler for the media story versus what actually happened? And of course, I know, joe, that there's a book coming and there's a lot of things that you're going to tell us in this book that that we we want to read when it comes out. But how much of this? What are that as bullshit?
Joe Turner:Weirdly Now, this is the part you would think was 50% bullshit, but it's not there's. Of all the stories that I've heard about this, only two of them were nonsense. So the vast majority of the details are all true and the girls themselves will tell you this and, weirdly, what is reported is nowhere near the level of what actually happened. It was going on for nine months, continuously, to the point that I don't know if you know Kathy the older girl, the adopted girl, the adopted sister, because there were two Bowen sisters, the biological ones, and they had a, an adopted sister.
Anngelle Wood:You confirmed that there was the, the friends slash adopted sister, who was a year older than Tina. You confirmed that with me.
Joe Turner:Yes, that was. That was Kathy Nappia she was. She met Tina at school and then Frank adopted her because her parents moved back to Tennessee and she didn't want to go with them. So she stayed in Tamesend with the Bowens that she lived there with. And now she got so freaked out by these constant interruptions that she was on the verge of going to therapy because she thought she was going mad. So that's how bad it got there. That's kind of stuff has not been reported before, but it really was exactly like the stories say. There were constant noise in the house, constant things going missing. They had to start putting lines on alcohol bottles because they wake up in the morning and they'd be a little bit lower. There would be music coming from outside which this stalker would engineer to, to to be created.
Joe Turner:The science incident. That was real. It was a freakishly bizarre coincidence, because the girls did indeed try and have a science to contact their dead mother Because all these noises. They were convinced, you know, they were the naive brains of teenagers and they're no year old. They're going to think maybe our mom was trying to contact us. So they did perform a science and at the same time Dan was in his hiding place causing trouble. Dan didn't know they were upstairs because he couldn't. You know, he, he, he was stationary in his hiding place, so he didn't know what the girls were doing upstairs. So it was just kind of a very freakishly bizarre time. You know, that is a kind of horror movie thing, because he was banging on the walls while they were having a science. The odds of that are quite slim, but it did happen and that's what that's where it kind of where it came from.
Joe Turner:And then, to make it even more unreal, now, I didn't believe this when Kathy told me when apparently it did happen and maybe she's misremembering, but it's pure, pure horror story.
Joe Turner:After the science she came downstairs to the kitchen and she saw a figure sitting at her kitchen table and of course she's 16. And she I don't know true, this is what she says A lightning bolt came outside and illuminated this figure sitting at the table. I thought, okay, I'm not sure that happened, but yeah. So the figure at the kitchen table, and there was someone there, and she was convinced it was the spirit of Ruth, her mother. And then she ran back upstairs to tell the girls they believed her. They all ran down, but then the figure disappeared. So I firmly believe that she saw someone sitting at their table, because Dan did used to sit at their table and leave purposely leave wrappers and crumbs out and stuff. So I believe that happened. The lightning bolt is probably a little bit of a bit of a flare, but yeah. So I believe that did happen, but that's kind of the extent of what happened.
Joe Turner:And then it wasn't. And then this stuff kind of went on it's kind of innocuous you know, banging and troublemaking and kind of signs somewhere else's in this house and of course Frank didn't believe them, Didn't believe his daughters. Frank thought that they were going through hardship because their mother only died the year before, so they thought it was a stress and trauma and stuff. Yeah, Then it wasn't until December 86 when they finally saw Frank, finally saw evidence that there was someone else living in that house. Now, I'm sure you know that part of the story because it's been mentioned a few times in places. So I'm sure you know that part. But that's when Dan kind of really upped his game.
Anngelle Wood:That's when he materialized. That's when he was leaving more real evidence indications that he was there.
Joe Turner:Yeah, that's when he left messages on the walls. That's when he left. He left a bathtub full of piss. He left a trail of pennies from the stairs down to the basement. He left a BB gun on the side. He got the Ruth's wedding dress out the cupboard and laid it on the bed for some reason which is where the myth that he was dressed in a wedding dress came from he put a knife through Tina's face on the wall a picture of Tina's face and he left a message in shaving foam and said I'm going to kill you. That's when he kind of went from being a nuisance to genuine threat.
Anngelle Wood:What do you think changed about him being a nuisance to really becoming? It became really sinister.
Joe Turner:Yeah, I think he. Well, we glossed over the fact that Tina and Dan had had a very brief relationship. They'd been on a couple of dates. Again, this was in Easter 86.
Anngelle Wood:Well, I read in one of in some of my research. I read in a little sun where Mr Bowen had said he drove them to the movies and then he had Easter dinner with them. That's the first time I had ever read any of that.
Joe Turner:They went on a one date in March 86. Then they went to have Easter dinner at Tina's Tina's nan's house no, she's like Tina's aunt's house and that was the last time her and Dan ever saw each other. And after that point Tina was like I've led him on long enough, because Tina kind of felt sorry for him. She was like she was boy obsessed in a nice way, and Dan was kind of like she led him on a little bit, she entertained him and then she humid him, then she let him go. Now I don't think Dan took that very well because he'd never really had any female attention before. He's like a 16 year old boy, you know, who's going to be fueled full of testosterone Now. Before this I don't know if I mentioned this, but Dan already had a rape charge on his name. He'd already raped multiple women in the tone and there was one woman.
Anngelle Wood:I read of at least one. There was information that at least one was confirmed. As you know, a 14 year old, unnamed girl, yeah. That we actually chatted about a bit and I also read at some point he was acquitted of that charge.
Joe Turner:He was when it was just before he got caught in the Bowen house. He was acquitted of rape because they didn't have enough evidence. And I talked to these victim extensively she's a good friend of mine there and she talked to the whole thing and she said what evidence could she possibly provide to prove that she was raped? But she's like Dan rapes her in his friend's house, like he had a specific rape room in his friend's attic that he used to take girls to, and only a couple of girls said that they'd been there, but only this one particular girl. You know was brave enough to kind of devour the whole details. But she said there were not enough evidence that the police could see, even though they saw the room where it happened the same day it happened, but they still didn't have enough. So yeah, but that's a different story.
Joe Turner:It might have been a different story now if it happened today. But back in 86, it was probably not as cared about, I guess. So he was acquitted of that rape charge in late 86. But yet until then he never really had any female attention. Meanwhile his friends they did have girlfriends and stuff. So Dan might have felt a little bit you know why, why them, why not me? Kind of holding sell mindset and he was.
Anngelle Wood:By this point he's deeply disturbed, based on his family life and experiences.
Joe Turner:I mean he was a true psycho, you know. I mean he was born with you know, and your social personality, sort of anyway. And then he had a horrible upbringing with his real father, who was not very close to him at all. Meanwhile his mother was kind of the opposite. She doubted on him and believed the son show me his ass, you know. So that had these kind of two extremes in his life. Then his stepfather came along and his stepfather was kind of indifferent.
Joe Turner:He was a nice guy and he provided for the children, but he was just kind of like he didn't really care that much. So, and by that point Dan was like seven, so the damage was already done. And then he kind of he grew up with this kind of like. He needed to have armor and his armor was kind of if he bullies kids first, they can't bully him, you know. So he kind of did things that way. I mean he'd get into fights at school. He was cruel to animals. He was used to abduct rats and mice from his garden and torture them and stuff. He had a shed full of stray cats that he abducted in the back of his garden. It's just kind of weird, weird little things like that, and he already had an obsession with the Nazis as well. That's something that's mentioned anyway.
Anngelle Wood:I think I touched on that a little bit with one of our exchanges that I there's no possible way I was ever in the same place as him. It just it doesn't line up. But I know people. I have friends who lived in that area, who I was friends with and I would, you know, as a kid. We would get rides back and forth to visit each other and one of them, or two of them, went to St Bernard's we call it St Bernadette's because we have the Boston accent and one of my friends relayed information about him being very strange, being a loner, kind of preferring to be by himself really.
Joe Turner:Yeah, that's pretty much the same. They said he was in.
Anngelle Wood:He was definitely into Nazis. He's like he was into Nazi stuff and weird shit. And then there was this book they all had. He's like, yeah, dan was into this book, the vigilantes handbook or something like that.
Joe Turner:The vigilantes handbook?
Anngelle Wood:yeah, I know, I've heard that one there.
Joe Turner:Absolutely they all had it. I guess at that age when they were.
Anngelle Wood:Dan was older than us, for sure, but it's the community of people because it's small town stuff. All the kids hung around. They were younger kids, they were like adults. That would I mean when you're my age like adults was like a 19 year old. Right, we're hanging around at parties.
Joe Turner:You know, there's just no way.
Anngelle Wood:It's a horrifying thought, though, to think, hearing all of these things about this boy, and then what he has done to other people, and now subsequently a murderer. So let's go to December 1986. He is Daniel LaPlante is discovered in the Bowen home. They have got to be horrified. He's arrested and the Bowens temporarily leave their house on Lawrence Street in Pepperall, go someplace else to feel safer. What happens to Dan LaPlante when he is arrested by the Pepperall police?
Joe Turner:He's taken to the police station and Tom, the guy that arrested him, said he took 10 mug shots of Dan because he knew he'd be seeing him again, so he knew he'd need to spread them around town. And then Dan was sent to juvenile detention for what was meant to be a long time. In October 1987, 10 months later his mom bailed him out, so he spent 10 months in juvenile. After that incident he went through a few psychological evaluations at the time and that was really all he did. He just spent his time in juvenile detention, couldn't read too much else.
Anngelle Wood:At that point, when he was released, his mom took out a $10,000 mortgage on their home. He's released to her custody. I would imagine he's 17 years of age by this time and he's scheduled to appear in court in December 11th or something like that of 1987. We know what happens on December 1st of 1987, however, so he never made it to court to face, I guess at this point, an adult charge for the kidnapping, et cetera for the Bowen incident.
Joe Turner:No, he never got there. Those crimes weren't able to be used in the Gustavsson trial either, so his criminal past was not taken into consideration. Not that he mattered, because he got three life sentences anyway. He wasn't going to be charged as an adult for the stalking crimes, and I think he was only he wasn't. No, he was a juvenile court. I believe I've got the actual thing here that it tells me. But no, he wasn't, and it was only on breaking and entering, he wasn't on stalking, I believe.
Anngelle Wood:That's something that was a little cloudy to me, because I know that he was in juvenile hall or juvenile detention. He turned 17 while he was there. He was bailed out by his mom and then they set a date with air. The gray area for me was okay, so did they did his juvenile charges then graduate to adult charges?
Joe Turner:Yeah, he wasn't meant to be charged as an adult for the breaking and entering and attempted aggravated assault, so stalking wasn't exactly in the question. But of course I suppose it's hard to confirm that he had been in the house for so long. So all they had was the three girls' testimonies and unfortunately testimonies aren't worth a lot. I mean, obviously he was in the house. They probably couldn't prove it, so they just got him on breaking and entering and aggravated assault, but of course he never came around to that. It's something that over-roaded Danny Psychiatrist believed that Danny's motivation was love and affection. There you go. That's a scoop.
Anngelle Wood:Because he just upped his game, so he's released in October, within about a week's time. Daniela Plant is back to his old ways and breaking into homes. But one thing that differentiated Daniela Plant from just your average everyday burglar thief is he was getting off on disturbing the residents. He was breaking into home. Sometimes, don't we know small towns just leave the door unlocked. Unfortunately, that's something I tell everybody all the time Lock your fucking doors. He was sometimes breaking into homes or sometimes just walking through unlocked doors, moving things around, laying on the emotions of the people whose homes that he was in, sometimes taking things but sometimes leaving things. So this behavior ramped up right after he got out of the juvenile detention.
Joe Turner:Burglary was his main motivation because he liked stealing things basically, and he'd always done that from when he was like 14. He was breaking into houses and shops and towns and stealing stuff all the time, so that was kind of second nature to him. But yeah, when he was out of juvenile he did. If there was nothing he could find that was worth taking, he'd just move something around or just to let the owners know that he'd been there. And I think he got the idea from Charles Manson because at this point Charles Manson was a notable figure and Dan did have one particular friend that was very serial killer obsessed, got Dan into Nazis and serial killers and the two serial killers in particular were Charles Manson and Ian Brady. If you know them who were Ian Brady? Obviously it was also a child murder, so that could have imprinted him down as well.
Joe Turner:Got the idea from Charles Manson because Charles Manson used to get his followers to go in people's houses and walk around, not take anything, just to get used to the idea of being around sleeping people and being stealthy and shadow-like. So I think that's where Dan got the idea from and of course he gave him a thrill as well knowing the idea that someone would wake up and be terrified. That's what got him off. And obviously that's what got him off before with Tina as well, because he spent eight months doing exactly that to her. So that became kind of a thing for him Over time.
Joe Turner:That wasn't enough. He had to get closer to the terror. I think at first he liked to be distant from the terror because he liked to kind of like he liked to start fires as well. And that's kind of the same cry you start a fire, you can step back, you don't have to be there. When the fire takes hold, you're completely gone. So it's like terror from a distance. And I think Dan kind of got off on that for a while and then over time that's not enough. You need to kind of up the ante, progress stuff, be close to it, keep chasing that high that you got the first time. And to do that you have to take more risks. And that's when he decided to go full homicide.
Anngelle Wood:Because he had broken into the Gustafson home in early November and taken a number of things. How often did you sort out that he was actually at the Gustafson home?
Joe Turner:He was there a lot because it was the closest house to his house, because all he had to do was go in his back garden and he played in those woods from when he was in his early teens. So he knew that house very well. He knew the whole layout. And another thing was you know Judith the View Egg. Her house was next to the Gustafson house 100 or 200 yards away.
Anngelle Wood:Yeah.
Joe Turner:And Dan was drawn to that house because of its morbid history. So obviously he knew that whole area super well and I think he was at the Gustafson's house. A lot People in town said, yeah, we used to see him hanging outside the stretch of Woodland daily. Really he obviously got in the house at least once before, but chances are it's a lot more because he knew his way around the house. Basically, you know you don't get that off one of one visits. He knew you well so chances are he burgled that house several times at least.
Anngelle Wood:And he went back on December 1st 1987. It's been suggested that he was going to rob it again. But do you think he had that plan all along or, as some, some writing has suggested, that he just decided in the moment what he was going to do when Priscilla and little William came in?
Joe Turner:No, I think he had every intention to kill Priscilla, because he came with a gun and a bunch of bullets and he had a porno magazine with him as well, and I don't think you go anywhere with a gun, a loaded gun, and a porno mag with the intention of doing something pretty horrific. So I think he had every intention to kill Priscilla because I don't see what he would get from killing a child. And I think he only killed William and Abigail because they happened to be collateral. They were just, they were there. But I think he had these urges to like. He's always had the urge to rape. He's always been a rapist from from when he was 15. So that was probably his guiding principle. Of course he needed to up the stakes to get that, to get that high again, and he'd been in juvenile for 10 months. So he'd been festering with these feelings, you know, for a long time.
Anngelle Wood:He was making a lot of plans. When I get out, like you and I are like when I'm done with this project, I'm going to, I don't know, take a long weekend. He's like when I'm out of here. I'm going to up my crime game.
Joe Turner:Yeah, exactly, it became an obsession, more than just something that you wanted to do. You know, make any compulsion. I firmly believe that he fully intended to rape her and kill her as well. So, yeah, I think he did. And then, when he saw her come in the house with William, he knew he had to kill William as well. And he killed William first. He did.
Anngelle Wood:It was unclear.
Joe Turner:He did. He killed William. First he bound Priscilla up on the bed, he tied her up with stockings panties and then he drained William in the bathtub. He held them at gunpoint first, tied her up, drained William, so Priscilla was alive while son drained the bathtub and as someone with a young boy it's a horrible thing to talk about. And then he came back, he raped her and then he put his pistol inside a pillowcase, probably to silence it. But Dan always did a little weird things like that. That made no sense. And then he showed a sharp sort of in the head and then he just left her, Although he did do some weird things around the house before we left. He opened the condom and left it on the side and left it on the floor, even though he didn't use it. So I don't know what that's about.
Anngelle Wood:What do you make of the condoms that they said were cut? The end was cut.
Joe Turner:I got pictures of those condoms reference me, the exact ones from the crime scene. I don't know why he would do that. He would leave things behind for no reason. When he was on the run, he left his jacket behind for some reason and no one has ever been able to figure out why and he would just leave little things around like he would like. He left wine glasses at the Gustafson house as well and he moved things around on the table. And for someone who was trying to hide his tracks, it's the anti, the Cicerover. So I don't understand why he would do that. I don't understand why he would cut these condoms. It's just he had some weird compulsion to mess with things, unless he was kind of a metaphor or symbolism. But I don't think Dan's that smart, so I don't know. This is the honest answer.
Anngelle Wood:He was pretty clear to authorities that he was, if not the first person to look at.
Joe Turner:Yeah, straight away, that was number one. There was one of the suspects below him. They found him immediately and they completely confirmed his alibi. So the only other option was Dan. He was the same officer that found him in the Bowen house that said you know what this has got Dan? The plan written all over it. Plus his house was, like, visible from the crime scene, so probably and then the dogs.
Anngelle Wood:The dog walked right through straight line from the Gustafson's home to 22 West Elm Street, to the front door, and of course they had to question the brother and the brother's friend at first to rule them out. But it was so very obvious based on everything the town had known about this boy from his adolescent years. You know there's even one report he was a suspect in the robbery of a store when he was about 12.
Joe Turner:He did do that robbery. He did the brick store robbery he did do. One of Dan's friends who used to rub with him told me he says, yeah, it was us.
Anngelle Wood:Have you spoken to Daniel Leplant?
Joe Turner:No, I've never spoken to Dan.
Anngelle Wood:Have you tried?
Joe Turner:Yeah, a bunch of times we've all tried. We tried to get Netflix to speak to him, but he wouldn't speak to them either. I've spoke to him through two other people, one of his, someone else at his prison. I spoke to the cellmate and then to Dan and they passed message to him, and I spoke to Dan through his mom as well. I call his mom a few times and she passed messages on to him and she sees him every week in prison still.
Anngelle Wood:Does she? She does not think that he in any way is responsible for this.
Joe Turner:No, she's maintained innocence from day one. Whether it's just you know her being a mom, I don't know whether she actually believes. It is another story. I think there's a part of her that thinks, yeah, he's. But she also told me she's never, ever spoken to Dan about the case in 37 years or whatever it is. She sees him every week and she's never spoken about it soon. So I don't know. I think she's got a little in a bit of denial there. She's a river.
Anngelle Wood:And what it's in denial. Good Lord. What are? What's the status of his siblings? I know he has two brothers. Did you say that he had a sister or two?
Joe Turner:He's got two brothers, one older, one younger Stephen and Matt, and one older sister, Angela.
Anngelle Wood:And she was really not privy to any of these things he did with the Bowen household, correct?
Joe Turner:No, did.
Joe Turner:I tell you that you did. I talked to her sister once and she knows all about his, his murders, obviously and I asked her what do you think about the whole stalking and the wall stuff? She said what the hell are you talking about? I don't know. So, thank you not know, right Knowledge for 30 years and your own brother, and she just didn't know. So I was the one that had to tell her about this stuff.
Joe Turner:It's a very bizarre conversation, but yeah, but she did visit Dan a bunch of times because she lived in Colorado for a while. Dan was in prison in Colorado. He got transferred there, so she she's a visiting regular there. But again she said she never talked about the case to him either. So maybe it's just a. I mean, I've never had a relative commit murder, so I don't know if you're supposed to talk to him about it or something. But his mom and sister didn't want to talk about it. His brothers are fine. I mean his older brothers don't really well, he's got his own business because I'm family and they still lives in Tones and I believe younger brothers moved away and changed his name. Didn't want the the name on him. So they're all fine really. The rest of his family are absolutely fine.
Anngelle Wood:How are the Bowen ladies these days? I know you said that Frank Bowen passed away at a pretty young age.
Joe Turner:Frank was passed away in 1999, so he would have been 40-something. He was in 30s in 80s. He was barely 50 when Frank passed away. He passed in 1999. What's weird is that the other victims in the story there are two victims. There's girls that Dan assaulted, there's Sharon the main one and a couple of others that Dan didn't fully rape but he kind of tried to rape them and that's bad enough obviously.
Anngelle Wood:Reports are that he was pretty inappropriate and didn't really know how to. He didn't have any chick chops. He didn't know how to behave around ladies.
Joe Turner:No game, you've got to be serious. No reason, I heard that, and there was also Pamela. Pamela Makula was her name at the time. She was the one that Dan drove her car while he was on the run. That's right, yeah, pamela.
Anngelle Wood:That bright orange VW bug that was just so inconspicuous.
Joe Turner:Yeah, told you he was kind of an idiot. You pick a black suit and you're going to go on the run. Yeah, you don't pick an orange fan. Pamela and Sharon they're doing fantastic in life. They've completely come to terms with everything and stuff. Pamela lives in Florida now. She lives right on the beach, so she's awesome. Same for Sharon as well. She's doing great. It's really just the Bowen family that kind of remain hurt by this.
Anngelle Wood:Are any of the Bowen people still in the Massachusetts area or has everyone left? I know there was the older sister, darlene, too.
Joe Turner:Considerably older. Yeah, darlene was from Frank's first marriage, so she was about 10 years older. Darlene still lives nearby. Karen lives nearby. Tina and Kathy have both. They've moved away, but the rest of the Bowen clan, they all still live nearby, so it's only really Tina and Kathy that have gone to different states.
Anngelle Wood:They've been open with you throughout the years.
Joe Turner:The first girl I contacted was Kathy, because Kathy was the most approachable one. I found her first. I talked to her and she was the one that put me in contact with Tina, and at that point, tina had never spoken to anyone about this. I mean, this was to be in 2020. This was like four years ago and I remember I called Tina. I was on the phone. I was thinking, shit, what the hell do I ask her? She's never spoken about this to anyone in 33 years by this point, and me and her were on the phone for three hours talking and she told me absolutely everything, from start to finish. She was the nicest person I've ever spoken to. She was fantastic. Karen was great.
Joe Turner:Within the first time I talked to her, me and her have gone really well. I've interviewed for this my book at least 100 people. I expected a lot more people to tell me to get lost, but no one did really, and one guy that went to school with Dan. They all said, no, I don't want to talk about it, but there's been like 100 other people that said, yeah, I can't wait to talk about this. I've been waiting for years to talk about it, which, again, my life was quite strange but great news for me, so I welcomed it.
Anngelle Wood:Yeah, I know the book is complete.
Joe Turner:Yeah, yes, it has been complete, you're waiting to be able to release that.
Anngelle Wood:I know you probably have a plan in place with how you want to release that. I know you have some other projects in the works. Is there anything that you are at liberty to share? You wrote something on your website about the Kim Kate Smont Vernon story, the disciples.
Joe Turner:yes, the disciples. You know the case, the Movawner one.
Anngelle Wood:I went to high school in the next town over which borders Mont Vernon and Amherst. I heard of it.
Joe Turner:Yeah, we were looking into that one because there's a ton of stuff that's never been reported. But the disciples were a much bigger cult than they realized. Like Steven Spader was a real, he knew what he was doing. He was a real functional psychopath. He could really manipulate these followers.
Anngelle Wood:I would love for this stuff to be able to be released, because there's so much misinformation. Like you even said on your webpage, people are reporting misinformation. They continue to report misinformation. I listened to a pretty reputable podcast. In their episode about the LaPlante story it was all wrong. I have come to learn through my own research that everything that was there was down to the wrong names.
Joe Turner:We know that they were called the Andersons or something, Andrews. Andrews, Jessica and Annie yeah.
Anngelle Wood:Where did that come from? That was just a made up thing, like what.
Joe Turner:It came from the investigation discovery show that covered it in about 2014,. I think they just made up some names. Basically, I love it when the explanation is so simple that it's just like they just made it up.
Anngelle Wood:This is what I hate about this genre is that people just make up stories. They develop their own dumb theories about things and then they make up stories about family members, how family members have some responsibility. It's sickening to me this case in particular. It's hard to get factual information. You really have to dig. I dug really deep just to find the information about the mom. Like I found the death notice for the mom.
Joe Turner:Yeah, you did.
Anngelle Wood:That took forever.
Joe Turner:You found a picture of Ham's orange van.
Anngelle Wood:Yes.
Joe Turner:I've never seen that picture and I've seen every picture.
Anngelle Wood:There's a black and white picture of it that's out and there's like cops. It's from the scene, cops are around it. Yeah, I mean, if you want me to email you all that stuff, if you don't have it a hard copy of it, I can send you all of that stuff. If there's anything that you've seen that you don't have, that you saw that I have, I'll just drop it in an email.
Joe Turner:I'm happy to share all of that stuff.
Anngelle Wood:You must have filed foyers for all that stuff and they gave it to you.
Joe Turner:They did, they gave it to you willingly. No, I had to fight really, really hard.
Anngelle Wood:I love the belief and it sounds like you probably share this sentiment that he would have gone on to kill and he would have been on the level of somebody like Bundy BTK. Perhaps he would have probably got a few Ridgeway, yeah.
Joe Turner:If he was smart enough to not get caught, yes, then he could have. Maybe not Ridgeway or Bundy, because they were like 30 to 50, I guess, but he could at least have gotten five or six like Ramirez levels. But he wasn't smart enough to kind of outwit the police. He thought he was, but he only thought he was because he never really dealt with any repercussions before, like he'd just done what he wanted his entire life and never really got any, never even admonished for it. So he thought he was invincible and of course the consequence of his actions caught up with him and he was imprisoned after his first serious crime. If he was a little bit more aware, and maybe if he was a bit older because of course he was 17, so his brain wasn't falling mature to that point If he was a little bit older, maybe if he was like 25, he could have been a lot more dangerous.
Anngelle Wood:He was on the way At that period. This is something that maybe you can confirm for me. What was his schooling like at that point? I know he had gone to the Catholic school for a year. Then he left the Catholic school, went back to public school in Townsend. But when he met Tina Bowen, who went to Townsend, the Townsend Regional Public School, despite the fact she was from Pepero, they weren't schoolmates she would have. It would have been really obvious to her if he attended school with her. When he said I got your number through a friend from school.
Joe Turner:Tina and Dan didn't go to the same school. They went to different schools.
Anngelle Wood:Was he even in school at that time, or was he a dropout. Like I don't even know.
Joe Turner:He was in school. He went to a bunch of different schools I'm just trying to remember the time line because there was St Bernard's, north, regional, middlesex and Hawthorne Brook. They were the three that Dan went to. Meanwhile Tina went to I can't remember the name of their school, but theirs was in Pepero, because that was in Pepero. But no, they didn't go to the same school. But the way they met was that Tina used to give her number out to local boys, because that's just what she did. That's how you met people back in 1986. So she used to just give her a phone number to people. Of course it was a landline number, because you didn't have cell phones back then, I believe. And Dan got her number from another boy that she passed it to and that's when he started calling her and telling her who he was. And of course Tina had never seen Dan in the flesh at that point.
Anngelle Wood:So that is true. He did get it from a friend because there was a theory that he had broken into their house at one period of time and saw her photograph and was into her.
Joe Turner:He most likely did not. However, what's weird is the way they first met was Tina was at an event at her school and then this boy tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and it was this shuffled guy with greasy black hair and a black leather jacket. She said hi, I'm Dan. I'm the one you've been speaking to on the phone for the past few months. She doesn't know how Dan knew what she looked like because they'd never seen each other, so that remains a mystery. Now I think it's simple, as Dan said to one of his friends which one's Tina and they said that's Tina and all that's possible. He was already kind of scoping her out at this point from afar. That's how they met initially. That's when they got together, started going on dates and, of course, tina said he's nothing like what he described on the phone. It's time to end it. So that's how they first met. Not a love story at all, unfortunately.
Anngelle Wood:No, it's very teen.
Joe Turner:Yeah, it's not Julia Roberts, Weirdly, dan, he was really strong with that one. He was a football player, so he had kind of the body, you know. He had kind of the metabolism stuff. He just had a horrible acne-ridden face Because he was filthy, he didn't wash. No, he was crap. No, he was rubbish. He used to wear the same clothes every day. Take them off, put them on sweaty, put them back on the next day.
Anngelle Wood:Yeah, this is just so interesting to me to connect these dots because I am, like I've been reading about this case for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and, and you know, suspending my disbelief about some of the things that I've read and wanting to put some real answers to some of this, and you've been really helpful in doing that.
Joe Turner:And I'm going to Don't you understand. Don't you understand? I don't understand.
Anngelle Wood:Yeah, I bet.
Joe Turner:I'm just trying to think of some of the questions that I've got to answer.
Anngelle Wood:So here are a couple of things. Maybe you can clear up for me. His natural biological father, whom I assume is a le plant, did in fact sexually abuse him.
Joe Turner:His real dad was. Oh, it's a weird story. Dan was the product of an affair from his mom, so his real dad wasn't his real dad. Elaine was his mom and Claude was Elaine's husband. Claude was the one that gave birth to Dan's older sister, so that you know, impregnated his mom and made their older sister and older brother. Then Elaine had an affair with one of Claude's workmates and this is the really, really funny part. The guy's name was Willie Moore. Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, she had an affair with a man named Willie Moore. Now over here, willie means you cock and Moore. So she had an affair with a guy with a perfect name to have an affair with. And then she got pregnant with Dan.
Anngelle Wood:But then she married a Moore later.
Joe Turner:That's really really weird, it's really super weird. So Claude, the husband, found out about this deceit after Dan was born, because Dan looked nothing like the others, because Dan had, like he's obvious to see. Plus, dan behaved a lot differently to his brother and his sister. So Claude was like what the hell's going on? And then Elaine confessed to the general affair and Claude was like, oh okay, it's not my baby. Claude took his frustrations out on Dan, which is where the brunt of the problems began, and he didn't sexually assault him as such, but he was very abusive to him.
Joe Turner:And now you can verify this because Claude Leplante was also a criminal in the area. He was a rapist. He was on a rape charge when Dan was two years old, not against Dan, against a local woman. So he was also a deviant and again he was a suspect and some of the 70s murders. Weirdly, elaine and Claude had another baby and that was Matt, but still the signs of deceit. Claude couldn't get over the fact that his third child wasn't biologically his. It caused a rift in the relationship and then they broke up and then Claude disappeared in like 78, I think, and then they never saw him again and he died a few years ago Now. This is really just odd because Elaine was just a single mom of four. So Dan's biological dad, william Moore, set Elaine up with his brother, his brother named David, so Elaine then got together with the brother, dan's biological father, so basically Dan's so a stepdad was his uncle.
Joe Turner:Yeah, a weirdo, Dan didn't finally say it until court Because when he was in court it all had to be brought up because of the legal family relations and stuff.
Anngelle Wood:He never knew that his biological father was somebody else.
Joe Turner:No, he thought it was Claude from the beginning, and then he found out in court that that wasn't the case, because I think it was David Moore who had to ennames his relationship to the family. And yeah, that's how it all came out. Dan's sister and Dan's cousin both told me exactly the same story, so that's going to mess down, but by this point Dan had already killed three people, including two jules, so he was already being held.
Anngelle Wood:I mean emotionally, he was disturbed. Some people will tell you that no one's born bad. Other people will say that, you know, for some people there's just it's just there and it's brought out by abuses, traumas.
Joe Turner:Well, according to Dan's psychiatrist, Dan was born bad, according to the psychiatrist that evaluated him. So he was born. He said no amount of mental rehabilitation could help him. He was always going to be a child unset type B from day one. Well, he was born to be bad, but then you throw in parental abuse from day one and you got the perfect cocktail for a bastard.
Anngelle Wood:So then there was sexual abuse in the mix, by not a parental figure, then, but by a doctor.
Joe Turner:Oh no, there was no. Dan was never sexually abused. From what I know, I've never been able to corroborate from anyone. No, I mean, I've heard that from a while and I've never been able to find anyone who knew this psychiatrist or this doctor or anyone that abused him. If it was true, someone would know a very, someone from the school would know a very, but no one ever does.
Anngelle Wood:And it was never documented in any of the court records or court examinations that he was subjected to. None of that ever came out, so all of that information that has been reported about Daniel LePlant's past is untrue.
Joe Turner:Probably nonsense. He went to a weird special school for a few months called a day school. Apparently it was a thing in the 80s and that was kind of known for being very strict and being a bit on the religious side. And I hate to generalize, but we've all heard the stories about Catholic schools and children.
Anngelle Wood:Oh, it's real.
Joe Turner:There's a chance he happened there, but no one has ever been able to corroborate it, although one of the teachers didn't refuse to talk to me about it, so I don't know what that says for me and he did spend time at that Catholic school in Fitchburg, st Bernard's, for a long time was funded by, I believe, the Worcester Diocese and is not any longer, but had been. There's a seed there, but I couldn't confirm it, unfortunately, so I had to leave it out because I didn't want to put any rubies in it.
Anngelle Wood:Well and that's something I want to clear up because I don't want to put that out there I've reported that when I talk about something, it's been widely reported that Daniel LePlant was sexually abused by a parental figure and a doctor. Well, if that's not actually the case, he's just messed up from jump. That's a whole different story.
Joe Turner:I mean his real father was, but I think his real father. But Claude was abusive to me and he was verbally abusive and probably physically abusive, but never sexually.
Anngelle Wood:It's never come out in any of the documentation. Wow.
Joe Turner:No record of it. I think he would be there because of what happened, but strange.
Anngelle Wood:I wonder about the mother. I have so many questions about the mother and you've spoken to her at length and she just says the same sorts of things about him. Right, that he was delightful, a delightful darling.
Joe Turner:Yeah, pretty much. She's always said that he believes he's innocent and that he was framed. She's part of the conspiracy crowd that think that. Um not sure you heard the weird theory that Andrew Gustafson hired Dan to kill his own family.
Anngelle Wood:No, no, no.
Joe Turner:No, that's that Really. Tina believes that as well. Tina Bowen believes that. She's a big advocate of that odd theory. She believes that Andrew Gustafson hired Dan. Weirdly, dan and Andrew did have a connection because when Dan was on trial for the stalking and the aggravated assault on the break and entry, andrew Gustafson was meant to be his lawyer. However, there were only two lawyers in Tamesend, so there was a 50-50 chance. There was a calling for it, but he was going to get Andrew Gustafson Now. Dan then fired Andrew Gustafson from being his lawyer for some reason, don't know why, and then a few months later Dan kills his ex-lawyer's family.
Anngelle Wood:Wow.
Joe Turner:Don't know why Some people think that Andrew hired Dan to kill them because he wanted rid of them. Don't see why Andrew Gustafson would do that. It seems like a very odd way to do things, and the reason that theory's got legs is because Andrew shacked up with his new wife eight months after they died in the same house. So that's why people think it's a little bit weird. Who are we to put the stopwatch on? How long do you have to grieve for? I don't know. His mum believes that theory that Andrew used him as a patsy, but if you think about it for more than like 10 seconds, it's obviously not true, because Dan was in court. He'd just go. Well, Andrew paid me to kill them, so put him in bars and not me.
Anngelle Wood:There's just too many other factors in what happened in that home and what led up to the events of that night.
Joe Turner:The implication of that is that Dan loves Andrew Gustafson so much that he's willing to go to prison for the rest of his life for it, which I don't think is true at all.
Anngelle Wood:He never said any of that when he was arrested. After that, you know chase through pepper and air and all that.
Joe Turner:He never said any of that out of the game. The first thing I'd say to the police are on my own. So well he paid me.
Anngelle Wood:He paid me in cable box remote controls, because that's what every 17 year old boy wants. Right, I got some Liberty coins.
Joe Turner:I'll tell you what's really weird. The other day someone emailed me at Blue saying that she was Dan's girlfriend for the past 30 years. She said me and Dan have been in a phone relationship since 1991. And I said, okay, the reason she emailed these because Dan stopped responding to her calls a few years ago and she wanted me to reconnect with him. And she did say that in the early 90s Dan gave her $20,000. I don't know how that's possible. So I'm just saying I had to be. You know, I had to color these conspiracy theories. It's something to think about.
Anngelle Wood:Well, I imagine he also probably has a fair amount of those murder groupies too, because those folks come out of the woodwork and if you spend any time reading about people like Chris Watts and Scott Peterson, their canteens are full of dough because of all the ladies that think that they're completely innocent and hot behind bars. And that's a whole personality disorder.
Joe Turner:That's weird to me. Yeah, I don't understand those people.
Anngelle Wood:It's all really fascinating, and you've added more fuel to the fire with the conspiracy stuff, which I totally get. That that's a part of these cases, just because of the nature of human beings and you always look for explanations, don't you?
Joe Turner:You always look for some kind of reason within it, and people that believe it are Tina and Dan's mom, the only two people in the story that forgive him, you know, kind of forgiving me some of some kind of visceral level. I think these conspiracies are just kind of a way for them to justify their own beliefs to themselves, maybe.
Anngelle Wood:Do you think, given this information that you've been able to gather from the family and you know piecing things together from Daniel LePlant's upbringing in life you know he's proven that he wanted to murder and did murder Do you think that he would have gotten to that with the Bowen family if he hadn't been discovered when he was? Do you think that he seriously would have tried to hurt or murder one of those girls in that home?
Joe Turner:Yes, I think Tina was his target by the end of this, and when they found him for the first time, he did have a wrench in his hand. He was wearing with a wrench, if you know, if you're not playing on using it to either fix your car or hit someone with it. You know, I think he did have the intention to hurt Tina. At this point he was still a year younger, so whether he would have progressed to actual murder I don't know, but I think he did have the intention to do some damage to her, you know.
Anngelle Wood:And we knew that he was sexually dangerous.
Joe Turner:Yeah, very much so. So I think he was planning it at some point. He was building up to it. I think he was watching her from afar to kind of think. Because he liked her, you know, he fancied her, he wanted to be closer to her, and then that session turned into a rage and because he couldn't get her consensually, he was going to force it out of her. You know, I think that's what he was doing. No, I think that's true.
Anngelle Wood:I think ultimately that's where it would have gone, because it had built up over those months and we had figured out that his mind, he was just. It was a race against time, maybe for his own mind and desires and proclivities, or however you want to describe those things. I don't understand what that mind is like, but we've seen it. History has shown us a lot of people who think this way and then ultimately, after he went to juvenile detention and served those 10 or so months and came out, he had definitely had a lot of time to simmer with whatever these, whatever his mind was saying or playing.
Joe Turner:Absolutely so. It was over 10 months and then either grew to critical mass and he couldn't contain it anymore, and Priscilla Gustafsson and her children were the first people. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, he's in prison.
Anngelle Wood:He cannot be, he cannot go up for parole until he's about what? 62 years of age. So we've got some time we have. We have until like what is it like 2032 or something like that?
Joe Turner:Nine years left, yet he still. He will petition to get the parole brought forward, which he's done twice already, but he's been rejected both times. So chances are he won't be up for parole until 2033. I don't. I don't think he will get parole because he's been in prison. He's into our adult life. He can't adjust to the outside now, and if he did ever go back to Townsend, or if the people at Townsend knew that he was free, I think he'd be hanging from a tree before the day was out.
Anngelle Wood:And Frank Bowen. If he were alive, I think he would be the first in line, because he even said it himself that he wanted to kill him if he was out again.
Joe Turner:He wanted the guards to flush. Stands head down the toilet on his first day of prison, frankly.
Anngelle Wood:Do any of the LePlant more family members live in the areas the mom still around. You said the boys, some of the brothers, are probably in the areas the mom around.
Joe Turner:I forgot to mention. Elaine still lives in the exact same house that Dan grew up in, oh Jesus. So if you ever want to know where she lives, just pop by. I've thought about going myself.
Anngelle Wood:I've mapped it all out. I know where everything is. I Googled everything, I did the whole. I know where everything is. I mean, I'm not that close, but it wouldn't take me long to get there.
Joe Turner:I think I'm going to go there when I go to Townsend.
Anngelle Wood:I would hope you would. I would hope you would go and see what she has to offer.
Joe Turner:I'm going to go to Dan's old bedroom. It's still the same as it was in Noxnakes.
Anngelle Wood:I wonder what she may have found in there if she was brave or curious enough to go in there and look after he was gone out.
Joe Turner:I've got pictures of Dan's bedroom if you want to see them. They're not very prissy, they're just full of clothes.
Anngelle Wood:I bet the investigators turned it upside down. They must have.
Joe Turner:They found two newspapers and they had. It was reading stories about himself in the newspapers.
Anngelle Wood:Oh that's inevitable right With these people there's got to be a level of narcissism that comes into play too. I mean, even though he wasn't a bright person, he was diabolical enough.
Joe Turner:Okay, 100%, absolutely. He was very, very narcissistic. They all are, mm-hmm, they all are.
Anngelle Wood:And he he's being treated for probably a series of things in prison. We know that he is anti-social, oh yeah. Probably has some level of mental illness.
Joe Turner:He's definitely got some kind of anti-social personality disorder. I don't know exactly what he's being treated for, but I know that he's very isolated and he doesn't have many friends and he doesn't do a whole lot outside of talking to his mum. He was studying law at one point. I'm not sure if he's still doing that, but yeah, I don't think he's not the most favourable criminal. He tries to keep himself on the down low, I think, because I think he still gets beaten up by the other inmates because he's a child murderer basically. So he's bottom of the totem pole. There was a period in the 90s where he was transferred to California because he was scared of being killed by the other inmates. So they transferred him all the way to California where no one knew who he was. Then they brought him back in the early 2000s, but yeah, so he tries to stay anonymous. There you go.
Anngelle Wood:But he did try to sue a number of times, right, because?
Joe Turner:he felt like his rights were being violated.
Anngelle Wood:He couldn't get to the law library enough and he couldn't get feathers and pigeon blood for his quote. Unquote Wiccan ceremonies.
Joe Turner:Yeah, I think he's just bored and he's just trying to cause trouble for the courts Because they keep denying his parole, pulling him forward. He's just trying to cause as much problems as he can, as much hassle, because they have to kind of do something about it. There's a religious complaint, they have to do things like oh, for God's sake. So he just likes to wipe them off here. He's still the same little shit that he was 35 years ago.
Anngelle Wood:So, oh, that definitely has been reinforced over these last decades.
Joe Turner:Yeah, oh well. It's ironic that he will spend the rest of his life in a small space, because that's what got him in trouble in the first place.
Anngelle Wood:That's right. That's right. It was a very small space that he could. What were the measurements that the investigator said he could? At his side, at the investigator's size and weight, he could probably squeeze into like an eight and a half inch opening, and Daniel LaPlante was so much thinner that he could have squeezed through like a seven and a half inch opening and that's pretty much what got him inside this little weird corner.
Joe Turner:It was a seven inch gap between pulled the wood away and it was a gap of seven inches that Tom said he would slip into, which is insane, and he just found this at random, like there was no way for him to truly know that this space existed.
Anngelle Wood:He just happened upon it.
Joe Turner:I mean it's possible that Tina brought that home at some point before and made being around the house and he'd seen it. Then she says not, but it was 35 years ago. You can't remember everything that everybody's telling her. So there's a chance it was that or there's a chance he just snuck in the house when they were at school and he was truanty and he just wandered around the house freely and was able to find it, find it like that. But a lot of Dan's friends said he was really good at hiding, whether that's a played a partner, and weirdly Dan used to make tunnels from his own bedroom to the rest of the parts of his house, so he was really good at getting into small spaces. So it's kind of it was like a thing for him. It was like fetish. He had a whole lot of fetish.
Anngelle Wood:Well, I hope that he's enjoying his very small cell in MCI Norfolk or wherever he is now.
Joe Turner:Yep, MCI Norfolk and let's hope he never gets out.
Anngelle Wood:In the state of Massachusetts. Despite the courts ruling about adolescents, he is not one of those perpetrators that they're going to take any compassion on. He is not one of them.
Joe Turner:He's too notorious. The crimes were too serious as well. I remember I tried to get the transcripts from his court a few years ago. The phone operator said I said it's for Daniel Laplante. My God, not that guy. We don't talk about him around here. He's too notorious. And the district attorney at the time, tom Raleigh he's retired now but he still has some political sway in the courts in Massachusetts. He was the main guy that got down the life sentence, despite him being 17. And if he's still around when Dan's parole comes up, there's no chance Tom won't create a retirement and say no, you keep that son of a bitch and prison till the day he knows. So that's always useful to have.
Anngelle Wood:Oh, tom Raleigh has been quoted as saying that he's somebody that would have. He would have ramped up the violence and he would have ramped up the death.
Joe Turner:Tom was great. Tom was very instrumental in getting justice. Really, there was this weird documentary made about Dan in 1989, about all these crimes. It was like this three hour long documentary that was made by his Channel 5 team and Tom got the documentary scrubbed from the earth because it blamed porn and heavy metal on Dan doing all the way to do what he did, and Tom thought it was stupid, so he got the whole thing scrunched. Well, that was a very 80s.
Anngelle Wood:That was a very 80s kind of thing. The influence of you probably saw it. You know, being in the UK you probably at least heard Judas.
Joe Turner:Priest.
Anngelle Wood:Later, judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath were being held responsible by all of the misspent youth, or all of the things that happened to teenage kids. For some people that influences behavior, a small amount of people who are already they're already miswired in that bad video games, you know, don't force people to, don't drive people to kill. But if you're already you know your wiring is already crossed, then that's a whole different story.
Joe Turner:But I love Priest and Ozzy and I turned out fine, you know.
Anngelle Wood:Me too. I didn't kill anybody, not a soul.
Joe Turner:Still poeple.
Anngelle Wood:Never would.
Joe Turner:Not one, not even one person.
Anngelle Wood:Yeah, this is some. This has been kind of well has been eye opening in that a lot of the stuff that's that exists about this case, these cases, is really wrong. It's really wrong.
Joe Turner:I don't know how he got so wrong.
Anngelle Wood:Yeah, I mean, some of the stuff that I really wanted to clear up was was he actually sexually abused? There's really no concrete evidence that can prove that, so that's got to be corrected. That's a lot of the basis for his behavior. For people to believe this is why he was so bad. Oh, he was treated terribly. His own father abused him sexually and psychologically and physically. Well, of course that's why. And then he went to a doctor and the doctor gave him a bad touch and we don't know.
Joe Turner:The closest thing we've got to it is Dan's biological dad, claude, was a rapist. So this young boy who learns about his dad sexually assaulting a woman on the street, I mean that might have an effect on him, but that's the closest thing you can get to the kind of sexual assault from. I mean I'm a young age. But yeah, there you go.
Anngelle Wood:The Claude LePlant man is passed.
Joe Turner:He was a deeply troubled man, alcoholic.
Anngelle Wood:That does do something. You know, daniela plant being in the presence of somebody who was so shitty that proclivity for his porn obsession addiction. If that's what Daniela plant had, I don't know. But that's all relative.
Joe Turner:He always had a porn I'll make in his bag, never seen with anyone. Dan was like feeling women in the the towns and commons and every time you go to a party, him and his friends would really go too far and pull them in skirts up and had no shame.
Anngelle Wood:He was. He was sad to be very, very weird, very inappropriate. So let's keep in touch.
Joe Turner:Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun.
Anngelle Wood:You send me some things and let's just figure out when you're going to be here.
Joe Turner:Awesome, I'll speak to you soon.
Anngelle Wood:Thank you, well, that sure is something. I'm still taking this all in the fact that there's no evidence of Daniela plant being sexually abused. Every single story about Daniela plant and his crimes says that he was sexually abused by his father, some stories say his stepfather and most stories say uh psychiatrists that he was sent to. According to Joe Turner's research for his book, none of that can be corroborated. Daniela plant did not know that his father was not his natural father and to this day Daniela plant's mother does not think that he did any of these very serious crimes that he is in prison for. Joe Turner shared some photographs, some unseen photographs from the case. I have posted them online at crimeofthetruestkindcom. It is a bizarre case and is made famous as the boy in the walls, which is the name of Joe Turner's forthcoming book, the boy in the walls by Joe Turner about Daniela plant of towns in Massachusetts and his crimes. Thank you for listening. My name is Angelle Wood. This is crime of the truest kind online crimeofthetruestkindcom. Follow the show at crime of the truest kind.
Anngelle Wood:My next live show, thursday, march 7th off Cabot Beverly, massachusetts. I do have a special guest. Brandy from evaporate the missing is going to join me when we talk about missing persons and advocacy, regular, everyday people can advocate for families affected by crime. Yes, please, drop a five star review. Become a patron. Four tiers starting at just one dollar. I dropped another monthly mini for February, this month's about Evelyn McHale, also known as the most beautiful suicide. I feel like there are other things I need to tell you. Thanks to all the Patreon folks Lisa McColgan, riannan, superstar EPs and all of you fine folks. All right, I must be going and, like I always say, and I said it again in this episode, I'm going to be back. And again in this episode, lock your goddamn doors.
