Nation

Attacker jammed door to kill ex-priest

BOSTON - John Geoghan, the former priest and convicted child molester killed in a Massachusetts prison Saturday, was followed into his cell just after lunch by a fellow inmate who bound and gagged him before strangling him with a bed sheet, according to a union representative for prison guards.

The attacker, whom authorities identified as Joseph Druce, jammed the electronically operated cell door to prevent guards from opening it, according to the Washington Post. Druce tied Geoghan's hands behind his back with a sheet and gagged his mouth. He then repeatedly jumped from the bed in the cell onto Geoghan's motionless body and beat the defrocked priest with his fists.

There was one correction officer on duty in the "protective custody" unit at the time of the attack, according to an account of the incident provided by Robert Brouillette, an executive of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, who spent seven hours Saturday interviewing correction officers. State and county officials involved in the investigation would not comment on Brouillette's description.

Druce entered Geoghan's cell just before noon, Brouillette said, when the prisoners left their cells to return their lunch trays. The solid cell door has a chest-high window that guards can look through as they pass by. When the officer on duty heard noises coming from Geoghan's cell but could not open the door from the control panel at his station, other officers were summoned. It took several to pry open the door.

An autopsy will be performed today on the 68-year-old priest, who was being held in protective custody in a unit with 23 other inmates, ostensibly to keep him safe from the general prison population.

Druce, 37, was immediately isolated and will be charged with murder, investigators said. Massachusetts does not have a death penalty, so it is unclear what additional punishment Druce could receive since he is serving a life sentence for strangling a man to death in 1988. He also was convicted while in prison of attempting to spark an anthrax scare by sending envelopes filled with white powder and covered in Swastikas to some 30 Jewish lawyers across the country in 2001.

NEW YORK - The remains of more than a thousand victims who died in the attack on the World Trade Center will be preserved in a memorial space built at ground zero, in the hope that science will advance to the point that they can be identified, city and state officials told the New York Times.

Investigators have been so far unable to identify thousands of remains - some as small as a bone chip - because in most cases the DNA was too badly damaged, said Shiya Ribowsky, the deputy director of investigation for the medical examiner's office.

The remains, after being slowly dried, will be vacuum sealed in a white opaque pouch, Ribowsky said. This will relieve the memorial designers of having to include a refrigeration or freezer system in their plans and will ultimately do a better job of preserving the remains for study, Ribowsky said.

As of Aug. 21, 12,471 remains, or 63 percent, and 1,271 victims, or 46 percent, had not been identified.

VALE, Ore. - A van full of firefighters collided with a semitrailer truck and exploded in flames Sunday, killing all eight inside and injuring the two people in the truck.

The firefighters, all under the age of 23, were returning home to Oregon from an Idaho wildfire late Sunday morning, when the van crashed on a remote eastern Oregon highway about 15 miles west of Vale, Malheur County Sheriff Andy Bentz said.

The van apparently tried to pass another truck on a curve and collided with the truck, Undersheriff Brian Wolfe told the Ontario Argus-Observer newspaper.

The firefighters worked for First Strike Environmental, a Roseburg-based contract firefighting company. Their names were not immediately available.

CAMARILLO, Calif. - The recent blackout and a broken Arizona pipeline pushed average retail gasoline prices up more than 15 cents a gallon nationally during the past two weeks - the biggest two-week jump since the Lundberg Survey began keeping records 50 years ago.

The survey of 8,000 service stations showed an average of all grades of gasoline, including taxes, reached nearly $1.75 a gallon on Friday, just short of the survey's all-time high weighted average of $1.76 set last March 21, analyst Trilby Lundberg said.

The reopening of the pipeline Sunday and the end of the blackout means gas prices should fall.

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