Killed in prison. https://www.wmtw.com/article/convicted-murderer-james-dale-autopsy-new-hampshire-prison/42995470
Question re. Dale:
a) Was he definitely incarcerated from 1978 until Nov 1989?
The man indicted for the rape of murdered 6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp has a savage and violent past.
New Hampshire Union Leader February 24, 1999 Author/Byline: NANCY MEERSMAN
"Dale had a previous close call with law enforcement. The Associated
Press reported yesterday that Dale was charged in Pennsylvania in 1994
with involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent
assault, indecent assault and corruption of a 4-year-old girl.
CONCORD James J. Dale, a 41-year-old former Hopkinton resident, was sentenced yesterday to a minimum of 60 years and a maximum of 120 years for raping and murdering 6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp.
Dale, unless he lives to be 101 years old, will never get out of prison.
"You will not be eligible for parole for over 60 years," said Judge Kathleen A. McGuire. "The idea is, Mr. Dale, that you will never be free here in our community again.
"What you did to Elizabeth Knapp was horrific," the judge told Dale. "Raping a six-year-old is as base an act as one human being could ever do to another." She said the child's family has suffered terribly and always would.
Dale's face reddened when the judge handed down the sentence, but otherwise he showed no reaction.
Ruth Knapp, Elizabeth's mother, Elizabeth's aunts, her grandmother and other relatives embraced each other, tears streaming down their cheeks.
A jury on Feb. 23 found Dale guilty of brutally raping the child as she lay asleep in her bed and smothering her with a pillow to stifle her screams.
He had come home drunk July 3, 1997, to the apartment building in Contoocook Village where he lived upstairs from the Knapps. Soon after the crime, he complained to friends about police and reporters snooping around, reminding him of the child's death.
He quit his job and moved out of Perkins Manor, leaving his furniture and two kittens behind, first going to a Concord homeless shelter and eventually turning up in Arizona.
Police originally targeted the mother's live-in boyfriend, Richard Buchanan, as the killer, but genetic evidence eventually excluded him as the rapist.
DNA evidence taken from the body was a 3 million-to-one match to Dale.
The case against Buchanan is closed, Assistant Attorney General John C. Kissinger said after the sentencing.
Kissinger had asked the judge for extended sentences, which Dale would have to serve consecutively, saying he believed they would be the harshest ever meted out in New Hampshire for second-degree murder, but were deserved.
Dale will begin serving the rape-murder sentences after completing a 11/2-to-5-year sentence he's serving for burglarizing a shelter in Portsmouth.
The judge agreed the crimes fit the categories under the extended sentencing statute and sentenced Dale to 10-to-20 years on each of two rape counts, plus a 40-to-80-year sentence for the murder.
Kissinger explained that Dale will have to serve the sentences one at a time. After he is paroled for the burglary, he will begin serving the first rape sentence, a minimum of 10 years.
If and when he is paroled for that, he will begin serving the second rape sentence, and then the second-degree murder sentence.
"If he maxes out, he'll be 160," Kissinger remarked after the sentencing. "We think that's an appropriate sentence, given the crime."
Assistant Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said, "Some justice has been done."
"He will never be able to harm another child the way he has Elizabeth Knapp," Kissinger said.
Defense attorney James H. Moir said Dale knew he would probably be spending the rest of his life in prison but had not yet fully accepted what that means. "Slowly, it will sink in over time," he said.
Moir said he intends to appeal the conviction on pre-trial matters he wants the Supreme Court to review. Moir had reminded McGuire during the sentencing that investigators never changed their theory that Buchanan was the killer until nine months after they knew DNA evidence was not consistent with his guilt.
Instead, the state was "desperately trying to get James Dale to turn state's evidence against Buchanan," Moir said, and now wanted stiff sentences to make up for the embarrassment over the Buchanan fiasco.
He also faulted investigators for botching the crime scene, not taking fingerprints and other investigatory shortcomings he said might have helped exonerate the defendant.
Judge McGuire said the jury had heard all of this, and she was going to base the sentence on the jury's unanimous finding.
Extended sentences were appropriate and warranted, she said, because the crimes, among other things, manifested exceptional cruelty and depravity, and the victim was under 13.
Elizabeth's aunts, Deborah Dustin and Heidi Deschenes, spoke for the family, describing the pain they have suffered since the death of the child, who would have been eight years old on April 7.
Dustin said the killer has shown "no emotion of any kind, no remorse, no anguish, no sadness of any kind," and the family wanted assurance Dale "would never have a chance to repeat these crimes."
She said she hoped people would think of Elizabeth every time they see a "beautiful rainbow in the fresh clean sky."
Deschenes told of the pain she felt watching her brother bury his child. "The days since then have been pure torture," she said. "Please make sure he will never do this to anyone else again."
Assistant District Attorney Christopher P. Mullaney said rehabilitation and deterrence were not options for state prisoners James John Dale and Eric Thornton, who were convicted by a jury in December of using a razor blade melted into a toothbrush to slash the throat of a Graterford inmate they alleged was a prison snitch.
Dale and Thornton were tried together but sentenced separately Wednesday at the request of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department due to security concerns, Mullaney said.
On Wednesday, Montgomery County Common Pleas Senior Judge Albert R. Subers sentenced Thornton to 20 to 40 years for attempted murder, plus concurrent sentences of 2 to 5 years for assault by a prisoner and 12 to 24 months for possessing a prohibitively offensive weapon.
"Sentencing has to be for the protection of the public (and) in this case even the prison population can be considered the public," Subers said during Thornton's sentencing hearing.
Dale also was ordered to serve 20 to 40 years for attempted murder, plus a consecutive sentence of 18 to 36 months for the assault by a prisoner conviction.
Before sentencing, Mullaney suggested several ways to deal with Dale, who already is serving time for raping and killing a 6-year-old girl in New Hampshire.
Mullaney also detailed Dale's criminal history, including a 1978 conviction for beating a 73 year-old man with a pipe, stealing his gun and using it to rob a woman and hold up a cab driver.
"This man should be put in a small box on a shelf somewhere and be forgotten," Mullaney said. "Or he should be sent to a deserted island or to the front lines of Iraq to be used as a body shield."
Dale whispered occasionally to his defense attorney John Gradel, but mainly sat quietly with his hands cuffed in front of him and his feet shackled.
Thornton, on the other hand, reacted angrily in court on Wednesday as Mullaney detailed his long criminal history.
Mullaney explained to Subers how Thornton has committed crimes since he was a juvenile and has a long-history of misconduct in the prison system, including striking a prison staff member and manufacturing items to be used as weapons.
"Can't you cut the (expletive) and give me the sentence?" Thornton shouted to Subers. "Just give me my time."
When Mullaney told the judge he'd be willing to talk over Thornton, Subers explained to Thornton that the prosecutor had a right to present this information at sentencing.
That prompted Thornton to point at Mullaney, and used profanity to explain exactly what type of sexual abuse the prosecutor would endure if he ever were incarcerated.
Mullaney thanked Thornton for his outburst and then told Subers, "Wild dogs behave better than him."
After sentencing, Gradel and Thornton's defense attorney Leigh Narducci each said they plan to appeal the convictions within 30 days.
Victim Jasen Selders attended the trial, but was not at the sentencing hearing Wednesday. Instead he asked Mullaney to read a letter in court detailing that he believes Dale and Thorton should remain locked up 24 hours a day in solitary confinement.
However, it is up to state corrections officials to determine where and how Dale and Thorton are housed.
Dale already is serving a New Hampshire sentence of 51 years to 106 years in Pennsylvania prisons for raping and killing the 6-year-old girl.
Thornton is serving a 24 years to life New Hampshire sentence in Pennsylvania for fatally beating a man with a log.
Dale and Thornton are serving their New Hampshire time in Pennsylvania as part of an interstate compact.
After they are done serving their New Hampshire time, they must begin serving the time imposed Wednesday by Subers for the throat-slashing.
Thornton is being held at a state prison in Coal Township and Dale remains at the State Correctional Institution at Greene in Waynesburg.
James Dale seeks new trial 1997 rape/murder of Hopkinton girl By Nancy West Oct 29, 2016
For Dale, the reason he keeps fighting is simple, although it is unlikely he will ever be released from prison even if he were to be exonerated in Knapp’s murder.
Dale would still have to serve a 21 ½ – to 43-year sentence in Pennsylvania for trying to kill another inmate while he was incarcerated there. Having recently celebrated his 59th birthday at the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin, he admits there is little hope of a future for him as a free man.
Still, he spends his days and nights on his latest appeal, a writ of
habeas corpus filed in U.S. District Court in Concord in late June. Dale
is waiting to hear if his case will be accepted.
“Because I didn’t do it,” Dale said.
He is adamant that he didn’t rape and smother Elizabeth Knapp on July 3, 1997, for which he was sentenced to serve 60 to 120 years in prison. The case was highly publicized at the time, and another man, Richard Buchanan, was arrested shortly after the murder then released five months later.
Dale insists he will prove his innocence some day — or die trying.
Dale readily admits to trying to kill the inmate in Pennsylvania. He concedes, too, that he has been violent and assaultive for most of his adult life, which has kept him in and out of prison during most of that time.
But when it comes to the rape and murder of a little girl, Elizabeth Knapp, who lived with her sister, Sara, mother, Ruth Knapp, and her mother’s boyfriend, Richard Buchanan, in an apartment downstairs from his at Perkins Manor, Dale is also adamant.
“I didn’t do it,” Dale said. “Yes, it’s the honest-to-God’s truth. I’ve done a lot of things. I should have been doing life years ago, but not for this.”
Nashua attorney Robin Melone, who represented Dale in his unsuccessful 2014 bid for a new trial in Merrimack County Superior Court, said although she no longer represents him, she hopes someone will listen to Dale this time.
New evidence she discovered while stringing together other serious concerns about his case for the appeal show Dale should have his day in court, Melone said.
“There are many aspects of the case that I find very unsettling,” Melone said on Wednesday.
In that appeal, new evidence revealed that one of Dale’s trial attorneys, Nicholas Brodich, and the prosecutor, Kelly Ayotte, who is now a U.S. Senator, admitted they were romantically involved within weeks of Dale’s sentencing. They were both single at the time and insisted nothing unethical happened.
Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Kathleen McGuire ruled that, “Even if an actual conflict still existed when Ayotte and Brodich were dating, (Dale) has not met his burden of proving” it would have impacted his case.
There were important problems with Dale’s 1999 criminal trial and a 2004 appeal that deserve a second look, Melone said.
While rummaging through moldy boxes of records that Dale’s mom kept for years in her basement, Melone found a letter that backed up her client’s statement. Dale had told Melone that his appeals lawyer in 2004, Brian McEvoy, told him he didn’t have to appear for the hearing.
Dale was incarcerated in Pennsylvania at the time and didn’t want to appear via video. McGuire dismissed the case without hearing the merits because Dale was a no-show.
“I remember the moment I found the letter from attorney McEvoy in which he told Jim he did not have to participate in the hearing,” Melone said. “I yelled to my co-counsel in the other room. It was validating.”
McGuire dismissed Dale’s 2014 petition and a motion to reconsider saying they were untimely and barred by laches, which means Dale delayed too long in seeking relief.
InDepthNH.org could not reach McEvoy at work or home and when contacted several years ago, he declined to comment.
“Even the best attorneys make mistakes,” Melone said Wednesday. “But the good ones own them and fix them.”
The court record is incomplete as to what McEvoy told McGuire, she said, and McEvoy declined to speak with her.
“But I can’t help but think that had attorney McEvoy told the judge that Jim declined to appear on advice of counsel that the judge would have ruled differently,” Melone said.
Melone initially challenged the effectiveness of Dale’s representation at trial by Brodich and Jim Moir. Dale, representing himself, has essentially used the same arguments in federal court that Melone used in Superior Court arguing that Dale’s trial attorneys failed to call Elizabeth Knapp’s mother, Ruth Knapp, as a witness.
Ruth Knapp had told police she saw her live-in boyfriend, Richard Buchanan, raping and killing her daughter, and that she tried to pull him off Elizabeth. Ruth Knapp threatened him with a steak knife before he dragged her back to bed, Ruth Knapp told police.
Buchanan was arrested and spent five months in jail awaiting trial before he was released after DNA samples failed to implicate him.
McGuire also found that the decision to not call Ruth Knapp to the witness stand “was reasonable and constituted sound trial strategy.”
McGuire quoted Brodich as saying that Ruth Knapp had given three or four different versions of the events and that she appeared hostile to the defense and had a “motive to try to help the attorneys general prosecuting the case.”
“Attorney Brodich indicated that these factors played a crucial role in trial counsel’s decision not to call her as a witness during the trial,” McGuire wrote.
Dale had moved to Arizona after Knapp’s murder, but state authorities brought him back to New Hampshire on a probation violation. Dale was later charged with and then convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated felonious sexual assault. A tiny amount of his DNA was found on Elizabeth Knapp, but that link is also problematic, according to Melone.
“Today, DNA is analyzed by machines. In Jim’s case, the DNA was analyzed by a person, making subjective comparative judgments about whether the DNA was a match,” Melone said. “There are just too many questions on that front.”
While interviewing Dale at the Berlin prison, he showed InDepthNH.org a letter from attorney Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project asking if Dale is still interested in their legal help.
Dale said he has provided the Innocence Project with the information they requested and is waiting to hear back from them as well. Scheck was co-founder of the Innocence Project, which is dedicated to using DNA evidence to exonerate people who have been wrongly convicted.
Attorney Brodich recently told InDepthNH.org that it was difficult to remember what happened so long ago. But he was certain that neither he nor Ayotte would have done anything unethical.
Ayotte didn’t respond to requests for comments, but two years ago, a spokesman provided the following statement to WMUR:
“James Dale is a despicable child murderer and rapist who Sen. Ayotte successfully prosecuted 14 years ago, and this is his latest desperate attempt to get out of jail. It’s indisputable that Sen. Ayotte, who was single at the time, did not interact socially at all with the defendant’s counsel during the trial.”
Melone said as an attorney, she understands there needs to be an end to the appellate process, a final judgment.
“But I am hopeful that someone will eventually look at the substance of what we drafted for Jim,” Melone said.
Dale said he is a different man today, but still doesn’t know why he was such a violent man who drank so much in his younger days.
Or like the man he was on Aug. 14, 2000, when he and his co-defendant Eric Thornton were serving New Hampshire sentences at the Correctional Institution at Graterford, Pa., pursuant to an interstate compact.
Dale was convicted of attempted murder and related offenses after an exercise yard incident in which he and Thornton attempted to murder fellow inmate Jason Selders by cutting his throat. They thought he was telling the other inmates they were snitches.
Today, Dale has a job at the prison and mentors younger inmates so they don’t follow in his footsteps.
For his birthday last week, some of the other inmates made him a special meal to celebrate.
“We do things for each other,” Dale said. “They cooked me a meal. It had chili and beef stew from the commissary and Raman noodles, seasoning, cheese, beef stick. We call it a batch.”
Dale restates his position, time and again.
“I will say on everything I love. I am not guilty. I will fight to the day I die.”
James
Dale is pictured at the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in
Berlin with documents he has compiled in his appeal. (Nancy West)
a) Was he definitely incarcerated from 1978 until Nov 1989?
Buchanan Buddy Violated Probation by Leaving State; Neighbor Was Drinking, Brought Home by Police Officer Night of Knapp Murder New Hampshire Union Leader January 16, 1993 Byline: CISSY TAYLOR
A former neighbor and drinking buddy of
Richard Buchanan is behind bars on a probation violation, but officials
yesterday refused to identify the man as a suspect in the rape and murder of
6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp.
James J. Dale, 40, formerly of
Hopkinton, is being held on $50,000 bail in Rockingham County jail awaiting a
Feb. 6th hearing for violating probation on a 1997 burglary conviction.
Dale was brought back from Phoenix, Ariz., on Dec. 29, 1997, after being sought
since Aug. 26.
Associate Attorney General Michael Ramsdell yesterday would not call Dale a
suspect in the child's rape and death.
"There is no way a respectable prosecutor or law enforcement officer is
going to declare someone a suspect unless they are ready to charge them,"
he said. "Richard Jewell is a perfect example."
Jewell was once identified as a suspect in the bombing at Centennial Olympic
Park in Atlanta in 1996 and was hounded for months after until the FBI
announced he was not a suspect. He was never arrested.
Hopkinton Police Chief Ira Migdal acknowledged yesterday that one of his
officers had driven a drunken Dale home to Perkins Manor at 12:40 a.m., July 3,
the same night Elizabeth Knapp died.
He also said that Buchanan, 43, and Dale were known drinking buddies.
The child's body was found in her bed by her mother, Ruth Knapp, in the
morning.
Richard "Dickie" Buchanan, Knapp's live-in boyfriend, was arrested
that night after Knapp told investigators she saw him lying naked on top of her
daughter at 1 o'clock in the morning.
He was charged with two counts of rape, one of kidnapping and second-degree
murder.
The state's case against Buchanan fell apart when DNA test results showed
Buchanan was not the man who raped the little girl.
First, the rape and kidnapping charges were dropped. Then, when a judge refused
to delay the trial, set to begin Feb. 9, the state dropped the murder charge,
too, while keeping open the option to re-indict Buchanan. Prosecutors said
State Police had developed new information just before Christmas that would
take some time to investigate.
Ramsell said yesterday the state expects to arrest and charge at least one
person in connection with the child's death within four months, the amount of
time they had sought for the delay in the trial.
As investigators continued to try and determine just who raped and killed
Elizabeth, Dale disappeared, abandoning his apartment and failing to show up
for an appointment with his probation officer on Aug. 20.
The last time his probation officer met with Dale was July 16, less than two
weeks after Elizabeth was found dead.
Meanwhile, officials were asking for blood samples from at least a dozen people
who live in or around the apartment house on Kearsarge Avenue.
Only one of those people refused to provide a blood sample, Ramsdell said, but
he would not confirm that person was Dale.
A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said Dale would often join Buchanan
and Knapp as they drank beer at the picnic table outside.
The neighbor said Dale appeared to be extremely drunk for several days after
the child was killed.
Court records showed that Dale was taken into protective custody on Aug. 19 by
the Concord Police Department because of "excessive alcohol
consumption." He skipped the next day's appointment with his probation
officer.
A week later, a confidential informant told a probation officer that Dale had
left the Contoocook apartment, records said. He also quit his job at W.F. Lett
Manufacturing, a Hopkinton company that makes pistol grips, records said.
Dale was sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community
service last February after he was caught taking food from Crossroads House, a
Portsmouth homeless shelter where he had lived.
John Gifford, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said Dale had
moved to the Contoocook apartment sometime in the late spring or early summer.
Apartment manager David Ball said Dale moved out suddenly, without giving
notice and leaving his belongings behind.
Dale failed to show up at a November hearing on charges he had violated his
probation by drinking, getting arrested, moving out of state and failing to
report to his probation officer.
A warrant was issued for his arrest and his name was put into a national crime
computer, Gifford said. Police in Kansas found him in December.
Dale has a criminal record, dating from February 1976, when he was sentenced in
Hillsborough County Superior Court to 18 months to 15 years for armed robbery,
Gifford said.
He was paroled that December, but was convicted in July 1978 of violating his
parole by committing robbery, aggravated assault and theft. He was sent back to
serve the remaining 121/2 years on his armed robbery sentence and given three
more sentences on the new charges, Gifford said.
He was released on Nov. 3, 1989, and was not arrested again until he took the
food from Crossroads House.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
James J. Dale, 40, formerly of Hopkinton, is being held on $50,000 bail in Rockingham County jail awaiting a Feb. 6th hearing for violating probation on a 1997 burglary conviction.
Dale was brought back from Phoenix, Ariz., on Dec. 29, 1997, after being sought since Aug. 26.
Associate Attorney General Michael Ramsdell yesterday would not call Dale a suspect in the child's rape and death.
"There is no way a respectable prosecutor or law enforcement officer is going to declare someone a suspect unless they are ready to charge them," he said. "Richard Jewell is a perfect example."
Jewell was once identified as a suspect in the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996 and was hounded for months after until the FBI announced he was not a suspect. He was never arrested.
Hopkinton Police Chief Ira Migdal acknowledged yesterday that one of his officers had driven a drunken Dale home to Perkins Manor at 12:40 a.m., July 3, the same night Elizabeth Knapp died.
He also said that Buchanan, 43, and Dale were known drinking buddies.
The child's body was found in her bed by her mother, Ruth Knapp, in the morning.
Richard "Dickie" Buchanan, Knapp's live-in boyfriend, was arrested that night after Knapp told investigators she saw him lying naked on top of her daughter at 1 o'clock in the morning.
He was charged with two counts of rape, one of kidnapping and second-degree murder.
The state's case against Buchanan fell apart when DNA test results showed Buchanan was not the man who raped the little girl.
First, the rape and kidnapping charges were dropped. Then, when a judge refused to delay the trial, set to begin Feb. 9, the state dropped the murder charge, too, while keeping open the option to re-indict Buchanan. Prosecutors said State Police had developed new information just before Christmas that would take some time to investigate.
Ramsell said yesterday the state expects to arrest and charge at least one person in connection with the child's death within four months, the amount of time they had sought for the delay in the trial.
As investigators continued to try and determine just who raped and killed Elizabeth, Dale disappeared, abandoning his apartment and failing to show up for an appointment with his probation officer on Aug. 20.
The last time his probation officer met with Dale was July 16, less than two weeks after Elizabeth was found dead.
Meanwhile, officials were asking for blood samples from at least a dozen people who live in or around the apartment house on Kearsarge Avenue.
Only one of those people refused to provide a blood sample, Ramsdell said, but he would not confirm that person was Dale.
A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said Dale would often join Buchanan and Knapp as they drank beer at the picnic table outside.
The neighbor said Dale appeared to be extremely drunk for several days after the child was killed.
Court records showed that Dale was taken into protective custody on Aug. 19 by the Concord Police Department because of "excessive alcohol consumption." He skipped the next day's appointment with his probation officer.
A week later, a confidential informant told a probation officer that Dale had left the Contoocook apartment, records said. He also quit his job at W.F. Lett Manufacturing, a Hopkinton company that makes pistol grips, records said.
Dale was sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community service last February after he was caught taking food from Crossroads House, a Portsmouth homeless shelter where he had lived.
John Gifford, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said Dale had moved to the Contoocook apartment sometime in the late spring or early summer.
Apartment manager David Ball said Dale moved out suddenly, without giving notice and leaving his belongings behind.
Dale failed to show up at a November hearing on charges he had violated his probation by drinking, getting arrested, moving out of state and failing to report to his probation officer.
A warrant was issued for his arrest and his name was put into a national crime computer, Gifford said. Police in Kansas found him in December.
Dale has a criminal record, dating from February 1976, when he was sentenced in Hillsborough County Superior Court to 18 months to 15 years for armed robbery, Gifford said.
He was paroled that December, but was convicted in July 1978 of violating his parole by committing robbery, aggravated assault and theft. He was sent back to serve the remaining 121/2 years on his armed robbery sentence and given three more sentences on the new charges, Gifford said.
He was released on Nov. 3, 1989, and was not arrested again until he took the food from Crossroads House.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
Knapp Rape Suspect Has Violent History New Hampshire Union Leader February 26, 1998 Author/Byline: DEREK ROSE
The man indicted for the rape of murdered 6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp has a savage and violent past.
Twenty years ago James J. Dale beat a 73-year-old Manchester man around the head with a pipe and robbed him of a gun and cash.
Several hours later, Dale and a companion used the gun to rob a woman on the West Side.
Police arrested Henry J. Labonville on School Street, but Dale managed
to jump into a cab and put the stolen gun to the driver's head.
Police ordered Dale to drop the weapon, but he wouldn't. After a short
standoff, Officer Dennis Glennon shot Dale once, in the neck and
shoulder.
Police traced the gun to its owner, 73-year-old Vasilios Hasiotis, and
found him at his 225 Pine St. apartment, seriously injured from the 3
a.m. pipe beating nearly 24 hours earlier.
"He was in very bad condition when we found him," then-Deputy Chief
Edmund LeBoeuf said at the time. "He had several lacerations on the
head from being beaten with a pipe."
The cab driver, Roger Bergeron, said he wouldn't be surprised if the man
who put a gun to his head turned out to be the same one that raped and
killed Elizabeth last July.
"I don't think he had any remorse one way or the other," said Bergeron,
who now lives in Goffstown and runs his own airport limousine service.
He hadn't realized the rape suspect was the same man as the one who held a gun to his head around 8:30 a.m. Feb. 12, 1978.
"I'll be a son of a gun," Bergeron said in a telephone interview last night.
Manchester Police Chief Mark Driscoll confirmed the 20-year-old James J. Dale
involved in the 1978 robbery and shooting "is in fact the same person"
as the 40-year-old Hopkinton man indicted last week with raping
Elizabeth Knapp last July.
Dale has not been charged with Elizabeth's murder. She was found dead in her bed July 3 by her mother, Ruth Knapp.
Murder charges against Richard Buchanan, the 43-year-old live-in
boyfriend of Elizabeth's mother, were dropped Dec. 23 after DNA tests
proved he was not the rapist and a judge refused to grant prosecutors
more time to develop their case.
Dale pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated assault, possession of a
handgun by a felon, and theft of a handgun. He was sentenced to seven
to 14 years in New Hampshire State Prison on Aug. 29, 1978.
Dale, who lived in Manchester at the time, already had been convicted in
February 1976 of armed robbery, but he paroled that December.
Dale was released Nov. 3, 1989, and stayed out of trouble until a year
ago, when he was caught stealing food at Crossroads House, a Portsmouth
homeless shelter where he lived.
He was sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community
service, but failed to show up for a scheduled appointment on Aug. 20,
about six weeks after Elizabeth was killed.
The last appointment he made was July 16, two weeks after the girl's death.
Dale was caught in Phoenix, Ariz., on Dec. 29 after New Hampshire
authorities entered his name in a nationwide computer database for
violating his probation.
Labonville, Dale's companion in the 1978 pipe beating, received a 31/2- to 14-year prison term.
Glennon, now a Manchester police lieutenant, isn't interested in
discussing the shooting, Driscoll said. The shooting was ruled
justified.
Dale guilty in Knapp rape, killing. Hopkinton is glad it's over
New Hampshire Union Leader February 24, 1999 Author/Byline: NANCY MEERSMAN
CONCORD James J. Dale, 41, was convicted yesterday of killing Elizabeth Knapp by smothering the child during a sexual assault. The 6-year-old from Hopkinton was found by her mother Ruth Knapp on July 3, 1997, sexually brutalized in her own bed and not breathing.
Dale, who could spend the rest of his life in prison, did not react visibly when the verdict came down in Merrimack County Superior Court just before noon yesterday. Without hesitation, he put his hands behind his back as a deputy sheriff slipped handcuffs on him.
The crime struck horror in the hearts and minds of people in the community of Hopkinton where the child lived, and beyond. It provoked public outrage and calls for toughening death-penalty statutes.
"When we got news of it we sat down and took a deep breath," said Attorney General Philip McLaughlin after getting word of the verdict. "We were thinking about Elizabeth all the time," he said, speaking of the attorneys who prosecuted the case and state police investigators.
"We all thought of ourselves as having an extraordinary duty to her, and that's the way we have felt about it for many, many months."
Asked if it is true he carries a picture of Elizabeth Knapp with him, the attorney general said that it is not something he talks about. "That she was the picture of innocence is what was so disturbing to the community," he said. "She was everybody's child."
The jury of nine men and three women deliberated about 8 1/2 hours over two days before convicting Dale on two counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and one count of second-degree murder.
Dale had faced two counts of second-degree murder, one for knowingly causing her death and one for recklessly causing her death. Jurors acquitted him of the first count, but found him guilty of recklessly disregarding the consequences of his acts.
Both levels of second-degree murder carry the same penalty, "imprisonment for life or for such term as the court my order."
Assistant Attorney General John Kissinger said he will ask for "a very, very severe sentence commensurate with the crimes committed.
"Dale had a previous close call with law enforcement. The Associated
Press reported yesterday that Dale was charged in Pennsylvania in 1994
with involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent
assault, indecent assault and corruption of a 4-year-old girl.
He was acquitted on all counts and released from a Scranton, Pa., jail in 1955 (sic- must be 1995).
For months, the Knapp case perplexed and stymied law enforcement officials, who originally targeted another man, Ruth Knapp's live-in boyfriend Richard Buchanan, who was arrested for rape and murder the day the child was found.
Even though DNA evidence ruled Buchanan out as the rapist, prosecutors were reluctant to release him because Ruth Knapp, who has been described as intellectually disabled, said she had seen him on top of Elizabeth and had tried to pull him off.
Buchanan spent five months in jail before a judge told prosecutors to proceed to trial or let him go.
Ruth Knapp still believes Dale was not the only person involved in
the crime.
"Today a step towards justice has been achieved. The verdict today and the
evidence that supported this verdict do not exclude others from having
participated in this monstrous crime," she said in a statement from her
lawyer.
Knapp said she and her family "hope that the investigation will
continue."
Ruth Knapp still believes Dale was not the only person involved in the crime.
Today a step toward justice has been achieved. The verdict today and the evidence that supports this verdict do not exclude others from having participated in this monstrous crime," she said in a statement from her lawyer.
Knapp said she and her family "hope that the investigation will continue."
But McLaughlin said the case was closed. "It is quite clear and has been clear for months now" that Dale was the perpetrator. "For whatever reason, Ruth Knapp's view of what happened and our view are different.
The attorney general said he could not go into specifics on evidence that was not presented to the jury. Dale has been convicted, he said, the case has been proven and it is closed.
"We have convicted the person we believe is responsible. Period. We do not believe this is a burden Mr. Buchanan should have to carry for the rest of his life."
Defense attorneys were not allowed to tell jurors about what Ruth Knapp believes she saw, but they nevertheless raised doubts about what happened.
One juror, Robert M Boyce, said jurors were perplexed about whether "somebody else was there." He said investigators should have dusted for fingerprints in the child's bedroom and resolved some of the other mysteries in the case.
"We wondered if there was another party, or if there was a third party," said Boyce. "Even the state admitted they did a very shoddy job. The house was so lived in, but they should have done a whole lot more. They should have had prints. They thought they had their man."
After the verdict, Moir said, "We're very disappointed. We thought there was plenty of doubt there."
Ruth Knapp's attorney, David I Bailinson of Manchester, said the Knapps would like to see more questions answered.
"The family doesn't believe the investigation is complete... The evidence that supports the verdict does not exclude others from having been involved," Bailinson said.
"Today a step towards justice has been achieved. The verdict today and the evidence that supported this verdict do not exclude others from having participated in this monstrous crime," she said in a statement from her lawyer.
Knapp said she and her family "hope that the investigation will continue."
Ruth Knapp still believes Dale was not the only person involved in the crime.
Today a step toward justice has been achieved. The verdict today and the evidence that supports this verdict do not exclude others from having participated in this monstrous crime," she said in a statement from her lawyer.
Knapp said she and her family "hope that the investigation will continue."
But McLaughlin said the case was closed. "It is quite clear and has been clear for months now" that Dale was the perpetrator. "For whatever reason, Ruth Knapp's view of what happened and our view are different.
The attorney general said he could not go into specifics on evidence that was not presented to the jury. Dale has been convicted, he said, the case has been proven and it is closed.
"We have convicted the person we believe is responsible. Period. We do not believe this is a burden Mr. Buchanan should have to carry for the rest of his life."
Defense attorneys were not allowed to tell jurors about what Ruth Knapp believes she saw, but they nevertheless raised doubts about what happened.
One juror, Robert M Boyce, said jurors were perplexed about whether "somebody else was there." He said investigators should have dusted for fingerprints in the child's bedroom and resolved some of the other mysteries in the case.
"We wondered if there was another party, or if there was a third party," said Boyce. "Even the state admitted they did a very shoddy job. The house was so lived in, but they should have done a whole lot more. They should have had prints. They thought they had their man."
After the verdict, Moir said, "We're very disappointed. We thought there was plenty of doubt there."
Ruth Knapp's attorney, David I Bailinson of Manchester, said the Knapps would like to see more questions answered.
"The family doesn't believe the investigation is complete... The evidence that supports the verdict does not exclude others from having been involved," Bailinson said.
He thanked Judge Kathleen A. McGuire for helping Ruth Knapp and her
5-year-old daughter Sara endure the ordeal by invoking the Victim's
Rights laws to protect them from reporters' prying and questions. He
said the family is now concentrating on healing.
The defense had proposed to put Sara Knapp, who was under the bed when
her sister was killed, on the witness stand, but never called her.
Boyce said most of the jurors were parents and experienced deep revulsion and horror when confronted with autopsy photographs showing the child's injuries resulting from the rape.
"I'm the father of three," he said. "We were wondering what we'd gotten ourselves into. The first day was the worst, when we had to see those pictures.
As for the state's star witness, Roy Cottingham, Boyce said not all jurors agreed that his story about Dale confessing was credible. "I myself didn't believe much of what he said," Boyce noted, "And Dale's attorney danced him around pretty good."
In the middle of the trial, Cottingham was arrested and jailed after a positive cocaine test came back. When he refused to testify further if he had to go back to prison potentially jeopardizing the trial the judge found him in contempt. After a weekend in jail, he chose to resume testifying.
Boyce said the verdict hinged mainly on genetic evidence that showed the sperm found on the body matched Dale's DNA, with a likelihood of that happening of one in three million. Some jurors, he said, were skeptical that the science was exact, but all eventually accepted it.
Boyce said when jurors considered the medical examiner's testimony that the rape and smothering of the child happened "almost within minutes, "it was a foregone conclusion that the person who raped Elizabeth Knapp also killed her.
Kissinger and his partner Assistant Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said they were grateful to the jury for their thoughtful consideration of the evidence.
Kissinger said, "The killer of Elizabeth Knapp has been brought to justice." He said he hoped the Knapp family will find peace in the verdict. "I hope it does... But nothing will bring back Elizabeth Knapp." --
Hopkinton is glad it's over SHERI QUALTERS Union Leader Correspondent
HOPKINTON Local residents and Ira Migdal, the town's former police chief, are glad its over.
Many expressed relief yesterday afternoon after hearing a jury convicted James Dale of raping and murdering 6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp in Hopkinton in July 1997.
Vickie Hall of Weare, who works in Hopkinton said she is familiar with the case and expressed pleasure at the verdict.
"It's good they got Dale," Hall said. "He acted guilty from day one by taking off and leaving his belongings behind." Amanda Chase, of Contoocook, said it was great authorities got the right guy.
Dale was convicted of the second-degree murder charge of recklessly killing Knapp and two counts of rape. He was acquitted of knowingly killing her.
Craig Wofsy, of Contoocook, said he hopes the Knapp family can find some peace.
"It was a terrible thing to happen to a little girl," Wofsy said. "Based on the evidence I read in the paper and what I heard on the news I believe he's guilty. It's unfortunate it took so long for a resolution."
Migdal was involved peripherally by helping the state with the initial investigation, but never wanted to be a witness, he said. He retired from the force on Dec. 31, 1998 for health reasons, yet attended the trial every day.
"It was the most important case on my mind every day while I was chief," Migdal said yesterday. "A couple of weeks before I retired they announced the trial date. I felt bad that I was leaving the job with the case open." Migdal also said he was excited about the outcome.
"The attorney general's office did a magnificent job, especially with the DNA expert," Migdal said. "I was really confident after that. I was absolutely certain prior they would get a rape conviction, but wasn't sure about the murder. But after listening to their whole case, I felt really good they would get the convictions."
Migdal said it's good the family will know the 41-year-old Dale will probably spend the rest of his life in jail.
"They've got to do pre-sentence investigation into his lifestyle and background," Migdal said. "Hopefully that will put him way up into the 60-to-70-year (sentence) range. I don't think he should ever have a free day ever."
Migdal said his personal opinion is that it should have been a death penalty case with the jury making the decision. But he acknowledged the position of the attorney general's office that the issue of whether the murder was committed knowingly makes a difference.
"I'm just glad they've got the conviction," Migdal said. "The jury did its job and the state proved its case."
Dale gets minimum 60 year jail term New Hampshire Union Leader March 26, 1999 Author/Byline: NANCY MEERSMAN
CONCORD James J. Dale, a 41-year-old former Hopkinton resident, was sentenced yesterday to a minimum of 60 years and a maximum of 120 years for raping and murdering 6-year-old Elizabeth Knapp.
Dale, unless he lives to be 101 years old, will never get out of prison.
"You will not be eligible for parole for over 60 years," said Judge Kathleen A. McGuire. "The idea is, Mr. Dale, that you will never be free here in our community again.
"What you did to Elizabeth Knapp was horrific," the judge told Dale. "Raping a six-year-old is as base an act as one human being could ever do to another." She said the child's family has suffered terribly and always would.
Dale's face reddened when the judge handed down the sentence, but otherwise he showed no reaction.
Ruth Knapp, Elizabeth's mother, Elizabeth's aunts, her grandmother and other relatives embraced each other, tears streaming down their cheeks.
A jury on Feb. 23 found Dale guilty of brutally raping the child as she lay asleep in her bed and smothering her with a pillow to stifle her screams.
He had come home drunk July 3, 1997, to the apartment building in Contoocook Village where he lived upstairs from the Knapps. Soon after the crime, he complained to friends about police and reporters snooping around, reminding him of the child's death.
He quit his job and moved out of Perkins Manor, leaving his furniture and two kittens behind, first going to a Concord homeless shelter and eventually turning up in Arizona.
Police originally targeted the mother's live-in boyfriend, Richard Buchanan, as the killer, but genetic evidence eventually excluded him as the rapist.
DNA evidence taken from the body was a 3 million-to-one match to Dale.
The case against Buchanan is closed, Assistant Attorney General John C. Kissinger said after the sentencing.
Kissinger had asked the judge for extended sentences, which Dale would have to serve consecutively, saying he believed they would be the harshest ever meted out in New Hampshire for second-degree murder, but were deserved.
Dale will begin serving the rape-murder sentences after completing a 11/2-to-5-year sentence he's serving for burglarizing a shelter in Portsmouth.
The judge agreed the crimes fit the categories under the extended sentencing statute and sentenced Dale to 10-to-20 years on each of two rape counts, plus a 40-to-80-year sentence for the murder.
Kissinger explained that Dale will have to serve the sentences one at a time. After he is paroled for the burglary, he will begin serving the first rape sentence, a minimum of 10 years.
If and when he is paroled for that, he will begin serving the second rape sentence, and then the second-degree murder sentence.
"If he maxes out, he'll be 160," Kissinger remarked after the sentencing. "We think that's an appropriate sentence, given the crime."
Assistant Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said, "Some justice has been done."
"He will never be able to harm another child the way he has Elizabeth Knapp," Kissinger said.
Defense attorney James H. Moir said Dale knew he would probably be spending the rest of his life in prison but had not yet fully accepted what that means. "Slowly, it will sink in over time," he said.
Moir said he intends to appeal the conviction on pre-trial matters he wants the Supreme Court to review. Moir had reminded McGuire during the sentencing that investigators never changed their theory that Buchanan was the killer until nine months after they knew DNA evidence was not consistent with his guilt.
Instead, the state was "desperately trying to get James Dale to turn state's evidence against Buchanan," Moir said, and now wanted stiff sentences to make up for the embarrassment over the Buchanan fiasco.
He also faulted investigators for botching the crime scene, not taking fingerprints and other investigatory shortcomings he said might have helped exonerate the defendant.
Judge McGuire said the jury had heard all of this, and she was going to base the sentence on the jury's unanimous finding.
Extended sentences were appropriate and warranted, she said, because the crimes, among other things, manifested exceptional cruelty and depravity, and the victim was under 13.
Elizabeth's aunts, Deborah Dustin and Heidi Deschenes, spoke for the family, describing the pain they have suffered since the death of the child, who would have been eight years old on April 7.
Dustin said the killer has shown "no emotion of any kind, no remorse, no anguish, no sadness of any kind," and the family wanted assurance Dale "would never have a chance to repeat these crimes."
She said she hoped people would think of Elizabeth every time they see a "beautiful rainbow in the fresh clean sky."
Deschenes told of the pain she felt watching her brother bury his child. "The days since then have been pure torture," she said. "Please make sure he will never do this to anyone else again."
Prisoners sentenced in throat slashing of another inmate By BETH COHEN Posted: 03/07/03 The Reporter
Assistant District Attorney Christopher P. Mullaney said rehabilitation and deterrence were not options for state prisoners James John Dale and Eric Thornton, who were convicted by a jury in December of using a razor blade melted into a toothbrush to slash the throat of a Graterford inmate they alleged was a prison snitch.
Dale and Thornton were tried together but sentenced separately Wednesday at the request of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department due to security concerns, Mullaney said.
On Wednesday, Montgomery County Common Pleas Senior Judge Albert R. Subers sentenced Thornton to 20 to 40 years for attempted murder, plus concurrent sentences of 2 to 5 years for assault by a prisoner and 12 to 24 months for possessing a prohibitively offensive weapon.
"Sentencing has to be for the protection of the public (and) in this case even the prison population can be considered the public," Subers said during Thornton's sentencing hearing.
Dale also was ordered to serve 20 to 40 years for attempted murder, plus a consecutive sentence of 18 to 36 months for the assault by a prisoner conviction.
Before sentencing, Mullaney suggested several ways to deal with Dale, who already is serving time for raping and killing a 6-year-old girl in New Hampshire.
Mullaney also detailed Dale's criminal history, including a 1978 conviction for beating a 73 year-old man with a pipe, stealing his gun and using it to rob a woman and hold up a cab driver.
"This man should be put in a small box on a shelf somewhere and be forgotten," Mullaney said. "Or he should be sent to a deserted island or to the front lines of Iraq to be used as a body shield."
Dale whispered occasionally to his defense attorney John Gradel, but mainly sat quietly with his hands cuffed in front of him and his feet shackled.
Thornton, on the other hand, reacted angrily in court on Wednesday as Mullaney detailed his long criminal history.
Mullaney explained to Subers how Thornton has committed crimes since he was a juvenile and has a long-history of misconduct in the prison system, including striking a prison staff member and manufacturing items to be used as weapons.
"Can't you cut the (expletive) and give me the sentence?" Thornton shouted to Subers. "Just give me my time."
When Mullaney told the judge he'd be willing to talk over Thornton, Subers explained to Thornton that the prosecutor had a right to present this information at sentencing.
That prompted Thornton to point at Mullaney, and used profanity to explain exactly what type of sexual abuse the prosecutor would endure if he ever were incarcerated.
Mullaney thanked Thornton for his outburst and then told Subers, "Wild dogs behave better than him."
After sentencing, Gradel and Thornton's defense attorney Leigh Narducci each said they plan to appeal the convictions within 30 days.
Victim Jasen Selders attended the trial, but was not at the sentencing hearing Wednesday. Instead he asked Mullaney to read a letter in court detailing that he believes Dale and Thorton should remain locked up 24 hours a day in solitary confinement.
However, it is up to state corrections officials to determine where and how Dale and Thorton are housed.
Dale already is serving a New Hampshire sentence of 51 years to 106 years in Pennsylvania prisons for raping and killing the 6-year-old girl.
Thornton is serving a 24 years to life New Hampshire sentence in Pennsylvania for fatally beating a man with a log.
Dale and Thornton are serving their New Hampshire time in Pennsylvania as part of an interstate compact.
After they are done serving their New Hampshire time, they must begin serving the time imposed Wednesday by Subers for the throat-slashing.
Thornton is being held at a state prison in Coal Township and Dale remains at the State Correctional Institution at Greene in Waynesburg.
James Dale seeks new trial 1997 rape/murder of Hopkinton girl By Nancy West Oct 29, 2016
James Dale has filed a petition in federal court seeking again to
receive a new trial in the rape and murder of six-year-old Elizabeth
Knapp almost two decades ago in Hopkinton.
For Dale, the reason he keeps fighting is simple, although it is unlikely he will ever be released from prison even if he were to be exonerated in Knapp’s murder.
Dale would still have to serve a 21 ½ – to 43-year sentence in Pennsylvania for trying to kill another inmate while he was incarcerated there. Having recently celebrated his 59th birthday at the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin, he admits there is little hope of a future for him as a free man.
Crime
scene photo. Elizabeth Knapp, 6, was raped and murdered in her bed in a
room she shared with her little sister in Hopkinton on July 3, 1997.
“Because I didn’t do it,” Dale said.
He is adamant that he didn’t rape and smother Elizabeth Knapp on July 3, 1997, for which he was sentenced to serve 60 to 120 years in prison. The case was highly publicized at the time, and another man, Richard Buchanan, was arrested shortly after the murder then released five months later.
Dale insists he will prove his innocence some day — or die trying.
Dale readily admits to trying to kill the inmate in Pennsylvania. He concedes, too, that he has been violent and assaultive for most of his adult life, which has kept him in and out of prison during most of that time.
But when it comes to the rape and murder of a little girl, Elizabeth Knapp, who lived with her sister, Sara, mother, Ruth Knapp, and her mother’s boyfriend, Richard Buchanan, in an apartment downstairs from his at Perkins Manor, Dale is also adamant.
“I didn’t do it,” Dale said. “Yes, it’s the honest-to-God’s truth. I’ve done a lot of things. I should have been doing life years ago, but not for this.”
Nashua attorney Robin Melone, who represented Dale in his unsuccessful 2014 bid for a new trial in Merrimack County Superior Court, said although she no longer represents him, she hopes someone will listen to Dale this time.
New evidence she discovered while stringing together other serious concerns about his case for the appeal show Dale should have his day in court, Melone said.
“There are many aspects of the case that I find very unsettling,” Melone said on Wednesday.
In that appeal, new evidence revealed that one of Dale’s trial attorneys, Nicholas Brodich, and the prosecutor, Kelly Ayotte, who is now a U.S. Senator, admitted they were romantically involved within weeks of Dale’s sentencing. They were both single at the time and insisted nothing unethical happened.
Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Kathleen McGuire ruled that, “Even if an actual conflict still existed when Ayotte and Brodich were dating, (Dale) has not met his burden of proving” it would have impacted his case.
There were important problems with Dale’s 1999 criminal trial and a 2004 appeal that deserve a second look, Melone said.
While rummaging through moldy boxes of records that Dale’s mom kept for years in her basement, Melone found a letter that backed up her client’s statement. Dale had told Melone that his appeals lawyer in 2004, Brian McEvoy, told him he didn’t have to appear for the hearing.
Dale was incarcerated in Pennsylvania at the time and didn’t want to appear via video. McGuire dismissed the case without hearing the merits because Dale was a no-show.
“I remember the moment I found the letter from attorney McEvoy in which he told Jim he did not have to participate in the hearing,” Melone said. “I yelled to my co-counsel in the other room. It was validating.”
McGuire dismissed Dale’s 2014 petition and a motion to reconsider saying they were untimely and barred by laches, which means Dale delayed too long in seeking relief.
InDepthNH.org could not reach McEvoy at work or home and when contacted several years ago, he declined to comment.
“Even the best attorneys make mistakes,” Melone said Wednesday. “But the good ones own them and fix them.”
The court record is incomplete as to what McEvoy told McGuire, she said, and McEvoy declined to speak with her.
“But I can’t help but think that had attorney McEvoy told the judge that Jim declined to appear on advice of counsel that the judge would have ruled differently,” Melone said.
Melone initially challenged the effectiveness of Dale’s representation at trial by Brodich and Jim Moir. Dale, representing himself, has essentially used the same arguments in federal court that Melone used in Superior Court arguing that Dale’s trial attorneys failed to call Elizabeth Knapp’s mother, Ruth Knapp, as a witness.
Ruth Knapp had told police she saw her live-in boyfriend, Richard Buchanan, raping and killing her daughter, and that she tried to pull him off Elizabeth. Ruth Knapp threatened him with a steak knife before he dragged her back to bed, Ruth Knapp told police.
Buchanan was arrested and spent five months in jail awaiting trial before he was released after DNA samples failed to implicate him.
McGuire also found that the decision to not call Ruth Knapp to the witness stand “was reasonable and constituted sound trial strategy.”
McGuire quoted Brodich as saying that Ruth Knapp had given three or four different versions of the events and that she appeared hostile to the defense and had a “motive to try to help the attorneys general prosecuting the case.”
“Attorney Brodich indicated that these factors played a crucial role in trial counsel’s decision not to call her as a witness during the trial,” McGuire wrote.
Dale had moved to Arizona after Knapp’s murder, but state authorities brought him back to New Hampshire on a probation violation. Dale was later charged with and then convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated felonious sexual assault. A tiny amount of his DNA was found on Elizabeth Knapp, but that link is also problematic, according to Melone.
“Today, DNA is analyzed by machines. In Jim’s case, the DNA was analyzed by a person, making subjective comparative judgments about whether the DNA was a match,” Melone said. “There are just too many questions on that front.”
While interviewing Dale at the Berlin prison, he showed InDepthNH.org a letter from attorney Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project asking if Dale is still interested in their legal help.
Dale said he has provided the Innocence Project with the information they requested and is waiting to hear back from them as well. Scheck was co-founder of the Innocence Project, which is dedicated to using DNA evidence to exonerate people who have been wrongly convicted.
Attorney Brodich recently told InDepthNH.org that it was difficult to remember what happened so long ago. But he was certain that neither he nor Ayotte would have done anything unethical.
Ayotte didn’t respond to requests for comments, but two years ago, a spokesman provided the following statement to WMUR:
“James Dale is a despicable child murderer and rapist who Sen. Ayotte successfully prosecuted 14 years ago, and this is his latest desperate attempt to get out of jail. It’s indisputable that Sen. Ayotte, who was single at the time, did not interact socially at all with the defendant’s counsel during the trial.”
Melone said as an attorney, she understands there needs to be an end to the appellate process, a final judgment.
“But I am hopeful that someone will eventually look at the substance of what we drafted for Jim,” Melone said.
Dale said he is a different man today, but still doesn’t know why he was such a violent man who drank so much in his younger days.
Or like the man he was on Aug. 14, 2000, when he and his co-defendant Eric Thornton were serving New Hampshire sentences at the Correctional Institution at Graterford, Pa., pursuant to an interstate compact.
Dale was convicted of attempted murder and related offenses after an exercise yard incident in which he and Thornton attempted to murder fellow inmate Jason Selders by cutting his throat. They thought he was telling the other inmates they were snitches.
Today, Dale has a job at the prison and mentors younger inmates so they don’t follow in his footsteps.
For his birthday last week, some of the other inmates made him a special meal to celebrate.
“We do things for each other,” Dale said. “They cooked me a meal. It had chili and beef stew from the commissary and Raman noodles, seasoning, cheese, beef stick. We call it a batch.”
Dale restates his position, time and again.
“I will say on everything I love. I am not guilty. I will fight to the day I die.”
I hope he rots and dies in there.
ReplyDeleteI believe in the Concord Monitor around the time of his trial for murdering Elizabeth, there was a picture of him handcuffed in court. You might try that.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I will check there.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth was a friend of mine in preschool. I think of her often. She was so sweet and kind. One day at school the plastic shopping bag I was using for my things ripped and she took out her few papers and gave me her barney backpack. I hope he rots in hell for what he did to her!
ReplyDeleteIts nice to hear good memories of this victim. So very sad what happened to her
DeleteElizabeth,your family will never forget you. PK
Delete