Horrors at Sleepovers Detailed in Court Files
By Dave Wedge
Originally published by The Boston Herald, June 2, 2001
A fugitive ex-Marine accused of sedating, raping and videotaping his daughter's sleepover pals slipped drugs into the girls' frozen coffees, broke into their locked bedroom and lurked around with a camcorder light beaming before assaulting them, court papers allege.
"Once I got sick after eating dinner," one of Peter Gagnon's alleged victims told police. "We both did. Our heads were spinning and we both threw up."
On another occasion, the girl said her tongue went "numb" after drinking a "coolata" brought to her by Gagnon. Another victim told Gagnon's daughter that she woke up with a "bad tasting 'pill' in her mouth," court papers show.
Gagnon, a 48-year-old Northbridge cabbie, faces 38 rape charges and remained on the loose last night. Police say he raped six unconscious girls, ages 10-14, on multiple occasions over the past six months.
The disturbing case came to light after Gagnon's 14-year-old daughter found a strongbox containing nine videotapes of the alleged assaults in her father's closet. She pried the box open and watched one tape in horror before shutting it off and fleeing to a friend's house with the mini-cassettes.
"She said she knew what (he) was doing but didn't want to believe it," the girl's friend told police. "(She) was crying and shaking."
Gagnon, suspicious that his daughter might be heading to authorities, went to the friend's house on May 19 and begged the girl and her father not to turn him in. "Please don't go to the police. I don't want to go to jail,"a desperate Gagnon allegedly pleaded. "It happened a long time ago."
He told them that his daughter "found something she shouldn't have" and begged them to tell her to "call me before she does something stupid."
Gagnon's daughter told police she caught him several times sneaking into her room with a camcorder but he "claims he is looking for the family cat, that he heard something out the window, or that he needs to use the computer." The girl also told police that five of her friends in Ocean Springs, Miss., complained to school counselors in 1999 that Gagnon "improperly touched" them during sleepovers.
She said she and her father moved to Massachusetts in August 1999, shortly after the Mississippi allegations were levied. The girl, who has a half-sister and stepbrother in Mississippi, has since moved back to Mississippi with her mother, police said. Ocean Springs police say Gagnon was a suspect in an indecent exposure and child neglect case but wasn't charged. Police there are continuing to work with Bay State authorities.
Northbridge police seized video equipment and pictures of teens posing naked from Gagnon's condo in the Whitinsville section of Northbridge, in addition to videotapes, a computer and disks.
Gagnon, who retired from the Marines in 1993 after 22 years, married Concepcion Gagnon in 1983 in the Philippines and later moved to Mississippi. The couple filed for bankruptcy and divorced in 1997.
According to court papers, Gagnon pimped out his casino worker wife to make money to pay for her green card. She later got a restraining order against him but, despite allegations that he abused her and their daughter, a Mississippi judge gave him custody of the girl because Concepcion Gagnon moved in with another man.
Peter Gagnon is believed to have fled May 19 in his blue 1995 Ford Taurus and hasn't been seen or heard from since. Northbridge police Lt. Walter Warchol said police waited a week to file an arrest warrant and go public with the case out of fear that "publicity would send him deeper into hiding."
Bay State investigators are working with the FBI and police in Maryland, New Jersey, Mississippi and North Carolina—all states where Gagnon has friends and family.
