Few New Details in Bennett Case

By Sandy Vondrasek

After 13 days of horrific developments and daily updates by police, little new information about the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett of Braintree has been released to the public in the past two weeks.

Bennett’s body was discovered July 2—one week after she had been reported missing—in a shallow grave near the Randolph Center home of her uncle, Michael S. Jacques.

Jacques, 42, was charged July 7 in federal court in Burlington with her kidnapping, the same day that Bennett’s death was certified as a homicide.

As The Herald went to press yesterday, however, no murder charges had been filed in the case, nor had prosecutors released any information on autopsy results.

Both Jacques and Bennett’s former step-father Ray Gagnon were charged in federal court in Burlington on July 7, and both men are being held without bail.

Gagnon, 40, was charged with obstruction of justice, for allegedly destroying evidence in the case. On the same day he was in the Burlington courthouse, Gagnon was also indicted (charged) in federal court in Alabama for possession of child pornography.

On July 16, new charges of possession and transportation of child pornography were filed against Gagnon, this time in a federal court in San Antonio, Texas, where he maintains a part-time residence.

That indictment alleges that Gagnon transported child pornography in April 2007, and that he possessed a computer containing child pornography on July 1, 2008.

Both Jacques and Gagnon were initially scheduled to return to federal court in Burlington July 17, but those hearings have been postponed, at the request of the two men’s attorneys.

While there have been no new developments in the murder investigation, the case has sparked dialogues and demands, in the public arena and in state government, for changes to Vermont’s sex offender laws.

Jacques, a registered sex offender, was convicted in 1993 on charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. He served four years on the charge, and was on probation for about 10 years.

When Jacques was 17, he was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct, in connection with a series of assaults on another girl. However, charges were dropped, as the alleged victim refused to testify.

Recent media research into Jacques’s criminal and probation records, combined with a recent court affidavit, suggest that Jacques had allegedly begun to sexually abuse a girl (not Bennett) on a weekly basis three years before he was released from probation in 2006 (for the 1993 charges.)

Jacques was charged by the state with aggravated sexual assault on a child in that case, which is now inactive, pending federal charges against him.

Court records allege that he abused the girl for five years, from the time she was 9 years old in 2003, until recently.

At the time of his discharge from probation in 2006, Jacques was cited as a probation success story. Court records indicate at the time, however, that the assistant state’s attorney for Orange County, Bob DiBartola, argued that Jacques should continue to be supervised by the Corrections Department

Sex Offender Law

Central Vermonters will have an opportunity to learn more about sex offender laws and related topics in early August, when the Randolph Care Team, a coalition of community leaders, will sponsor an informational presentation on the topic.

According to Jeff Rothenberg, Care Team coordinator, details on that event will be available next week.