Victims: Priscilla Jeanne Morgan Gustafson, 33, and her children: Abigail Gustafson, seven; William Gustafson, five; and her unborn baby
Murderer’s age: 17
Deaths: December 1, 1987, Townsend
Priscilla was a nursery school teacher and was pregnant with her third child. Abigail was nearly eight-years-old while William was five.
Priscilla and her two children, seven-year-old Abigail, and five-year-old William, were brutally and viscously murdered by a 17-year-old home invader. The killer raped Priscilla and shot her in the head and then drowned Abigail and William in bathtubs. He was sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) and then re-sentenced to life with parole in 45 years after the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that juvenile LWOP was unconstitutional. The murderer’s 45 years to life sentence was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
Family of murdered woman, children say man never showed remorse
March 22, 2017
A killer convicted of murdering a pregnant woman and her two children is aiming to get out of prison earlier because he was a teenager when the crime happened.
Twenty-nine years later – the family of Priscilla, Abby and Billy are reliving the horror all over again. Husband and father Andy Gustafson, who died a few years ago from cancer, is the one who came home to the crime scene.
“Shaking and sobbing after seeing his wife shot in the head in their bed. Too afraid to look for his beloved Abby and Billy,” said Carol Gustafson, Andy’s second wife.
Daniel LaPlante has served 30 years but his attorneys are asking for a revised sentence that includes parole citing a 2013 SJC case that says teen killers cannot be sentenced to life without parole because their brains are not fully developed and they, in theory, can be rehabilitated.
“I do not have the words to fully express my profound sorrow. But I am truly sorry for the harm that I’ve caused,” LaPlante said at the hearing. “From The very essence of who I am, from the depths of my soul, I am sorry.”
Lawyers were in court Wednesday arguing both sides
His crime was a gruesome one; he’s convicted of raping and murdering Priscilla Gustafson was raped and murdered in Townsend in 1987. After raping Priscilla, who was pregnant at the time, LaPlante put a pillow over her face and shot her two times while her 5-year-old son was right there. He told the boy she was sleeping before drowning him in the bathtub — and then did the same his 7-year-old sister, Abigail.
“There is no conscious in this man to guide him through right or wrong,” said Christine Morgan, Priscilla’s sister.
Family of the three people he killed say LaPlante has never shown remorse and is not even close to showing progress.
“Do not let this man out. He should rot in prison,” he said.
The decision on his sentence will not come until at least Thursday, with the judge saying she wanted to take a closer look at the SJC decision and any factors it may have in this case.
Man Who Found Slain Family Learns to Rebuild His Life From Tragedy
By DANA KENNEDYMAY 20, 199012 AMASSOCIATED PRESS
TOWNSEND, Mass. —
Andy Gustafson wears two wedding rings: one from his new marriage and one from the marriage that ended in murder.
Two and a half years ago, Gustafson, 36, a small-town lawyer, came home to find his wife raped and shot to death. Their two children had been drowned in bathtubs.
A 17-year-old neighbor arrested two days later is serving life in prison without parole for the murders. He apparently had been in the house when Priscilla Gustafson and her son got home; the little girl was killed when she came home later.
“I was too afraid of going to look for my children because I was afraid I’d find them dead,” Gustafson said of that day. “It was so shocking and unbelievable. I screamed. I wailed.”
Except for the moving eulogy he delivered at his family’s funeral and his testimony at the murder trial, Gustafson has remained out of the public eye.
He has not remained a victim, however.
On Jan. 1, 1989, a date chosen to signify beginning, Gustafson married Carol, a 42-year-old widow. They have known each other since they were married to others and both couples attended Townsend Congregational Church. Carol’s first husband died of a brain tumor in 1984, after 15 years of marriage.
“It certainly would have been much more difficult without her,” Andy said, sitting in his book-lined study. “I don’t know whether I would have made it or not, without her. Now I have a reason to get up in the morning, something to live for.”
Rather than try to erase the past, they make it a point to remember. Both wear two wedding bands, their new ones on their left hands and their original ones on their right hands.
At their wedding, Carol’s first husband’s father gave her away. Andy’s dead wife’s brother sang. Carol’s matron of honor was her former sister-in-law. They had two ministers with ties to both of their first spouses.
“Your life is about your relationships. When you lose them, you lose your life in a way,” Andy said. “You either get stuck or you go on and make a new life.”
They both considered whether they might be remarrying too soon.
“There were a few people in this town that were just aghast,” said Carol, a warm, petite brunette, “but when you’ve gone through this kind of loss, you’re just glad the sun is shining every day. Life becomes more precious to you. We didn’t want to waste it.”
They live in Carol’s 10-room, yellow clapboard Colonial on Townsend Common, the center of this picture-book New England town about 45 miles northwest of Boston.
The house is three doors from the church where the Gustafson family’s funeral took place and where Andy and Carol were married, and just a few hundred yards from Hillside Cemetery, where Priscilla and the children are buried.
Andy has resumed practicing law at his office just across the Common.
Starting over has not been easy.
His life was shattered in the late afternoon of Dec. 1, 1987. He had just closed a big real estate deal and phoned Priscilla, 33, to see if she could find a sitter so they could go out to dinner and celebrate.
When no one answered the phone, Andy drove the mile to the rustic house, which is on an isolated knoll in the woods. He saw Priscilla’s car in the driveway, but the house was eerily dark.
He found his wife, who was 33 and several months pregnant, dead in their bedroom. She had been sexually assaulted and shot twice in the head.
He doesn’t remember everything that happened just after that. The trauma was such that he couldn’t sleep through the night for six months.
He remembers going into the kitchen to call the police and his parents. He was too afraid to look for the children because he feared that he would find them dead.
When the police arrived, Andy sat in one of their cruisers. An officer came out and told him that his daughter, Abigail, 7, and son, William, 5, were dead. They had been drowned.
“You lose total track of time,” he said. “The shock gives you the adrenaline to get through it at first, but then it wears off.”
After the murders, Andy moved in with his parents. He rented an apartment in Townsend, but within a few months moved back to his house.
“I had to emotionally reclaim it,” he said. “I had to go back in there and be all right. The house became a source of strength for me, with the memories of my family. The love that occurred there was much stronger than the death there.”
The first months were difficult, although dinner invitations from thoughtful friends helped, Andy said. He joined a support group for survivors of homicide victims.
“It’s a roller coaster with no highs, just different depths,” he said. “It’s a struggle just to get through each day.
“First you sob all the time. Then you set goals. Like, you say, ‘Today, I’m going to go shopping.’ You don’t want to go out and deal with people, but then you go ahead and feel better because you did it.”
Self-pity was not his strong suit.
“You always think, ‘Why me?’ But you realize soon enough, ‘Why not me?’ If you live with your eyes open, you know life isn’t fair.”
He gravitated to Carol, who understood better than most in their circle of friends from church what it meant to lose someone.
From the start, they both said, they have talked out their grief. Andy, in particular, still has bad days.
“My heart grieves for him,” Carol said about those times. “All I can do is hold him and tell him I love him.”
Andy said the hardest part was losing his children. He said he has had dreams about his first wife and each child.
“Each of them came to me in individual dreams and told me they were all right,” he said. “It made me believe in an afterlife. That helped me accept their deaths a lot.”
Carol said Andy has made her dream of having a family again a reality. They hope to adopt a child.
“That would make the circle complete,” Carol said.
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