Brooke Bennett’s Body
Found by Authorities
By Sandy Vondrasek

Hundreds of Randolph residents, including scores of teenagers and children, turned out Wednesday night for a memorial service for 12-year-old Brooke Bennett, whose body was discovered at 4:45 that day. Brooke was the subject of Vermont's first Amber Alert when she disappeared last Wednesday. Police have charged her uncle, Michael Stephen Jacques, 42, with kidnapping. (Herald / Tim Calabro)

A body believed to be that of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett was discovered by authorities in a field near Crocker Road in Randolph Center yesterday, July 2, at 4:45 p.m., State Police Director James Baker told a crowded press conference yesterday evening, "with a heavy heart."

Baker said that the body was found after police had conducted a search of the Randolph Center home of her uncle, Michael Stephen Jacques, who is in prison following an arraignment this Monday on charges of sexual abuse involving another girl, also related to him. Clues found at the house that led investigators to the Crocker Road site.

Late yesterday afternoon, there was no information from state and federal officials about likely charges to be brought against Jacques.

(The rest of this story, as well as other Brooke Bennett stories, were written before the late-afternoon discovery of her body.)

Michael Stephen Jacques appears Monday in Orange County District Court in Chelsea during his arraignment for aggravated sexual assault on a minor. The minor in this case, a 14-year-old Randolph girl, gave testimony this week that implicated Jacques in the disappearance of Brooke Bennett as well. (Stefan Hard / Times Argus)

A few hours before the discovery of Bennett’s body, new revelations and allegations in the sordid case came out in an arraignment in federal court in Burlington Wednesday afternoon.

The details came in a nine-page affidavit in support of a federal charge of obstruction of justice, filed against Bennett’s former stepfather, Raymond Gagnon, 40, of Texas. In his affidavit, the special FBI agent investigating the case alleged that the Bennett’s uncle, Michael S. Jacques, 42, of Randolph Center, masterminded an elaborate scheme that made it appear that Bennett ran away with a MySpace friend Wednesday morning, after Jacques had dropped her off in Randolph village.

(Jacques is presently in prison, on $250,000 bail, following his arrest Sunday on a charge of aggravated sexual assault, for allegedly abusing a 14-year-old female relative over a five-year period. The young teen said she was an initiate in the "Breckenridge" sex program, and that Jacques was her trainer. See a timeline on page two for a chronological account of the "Missing Brooke Bennett" case.)

Jacques told investigators he never saw Bennett after Wednesday morning. According to court records, however, Jacques and the 14-year-old later picked up Bennett and took her back to Jacques’ Randolph Center home.

The 14-year-old told the FBI agent that "she understood that Bennett would be taken into the ‘Breckenridge’ program that day, and that she would have sex with adult males."

The two girls watched TV at home last Wednesday afternoon, and then, the 14-year-old said, Jacques asked Bennett to go upstairs with him, and directed the 14-year-old to leave the house.

The girl, who was directed by Jacques to lie about what happened, told the FBI agent that she never saw Bennett again.

The affidavit details the elaborate online steps that Jacques took—with the alleged assistance of Gagnon—to put false postings on Bennett’s MySpace account, to make it appear that she had planned to run off Wednesday morning with someone she had met on the Internet. Jacques even showed investigators Bennett’s MySpace posting on his computer.

The computer forensics conducted in the past week included examination of Jacque’s personal and his work computer. Investigators were able to determine that the postings on Bennett’s MySpace site were made on his laptop.

According to the affidavit, Bennett’s former stepfather, Ray Gagnon, later accessed Bennett’s MySpace page from a laptop at his Texas apartment, and changed a user name and password, and posting times, apparently at Jacques direction. There were multiple calls between Jacques’ cell phone and Gagnon’s last Wednesday night, the investigator wrote.

The obstruction of justice charge against Gagnon stems from his confession that that he called his landlord from Vermont this Monday and asked him to dispose of a safe in his apartment that allegedly contained "a vast amount of child pornography." Police have not been able to find Gagnon’s safe nor his laptop.

The affidavit also alleges that Jacques directly misled investigators early in the investigation by reporting that "he believed that Bennett was going to picked up by a friend (last Wednesday morning) to visit someone at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center."

Police had previously indicated that it was Jacques who "found" some of Bennett’s clothing near Sunset Pond in Brookfield on last Thursday morning.

The affidavit filed in Gagnon’s federal case indicates that other, serious, federal charges may be filed in this case, including possession of child pornography, and charges related to kidnapping, and coercing an individual under 18 into prostitution or a sexual act. Gagnon will also be charged with aggravated sexual assault, in connection with a 2007 incident in Vermont, authorities have said.

Since the disappearance last Wednesday morning of Brooke Bennett of Braintree, a round-the-clock team of some 50 investigators and dozens of searchers have been focused exclusively on the case.