Death of an Altar Boy

The Unsolved Murder of Danny Croteau and the Culture of Abuse in the Catholic Church

By: E. J. Fleming

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

The tragic death of 13-year-old Danny Croteau in 1972 faded from headlines and memories for 20 years until the Boston abuse scandal - a string of assaults taking place within the Catholic Church - exploded in the early 2000s. Despite numerous indications, including 40 claims of sexual misconduct with minors, pointing to him as Croteau's killer, Reverend Richard R. Lavigne remains "innocent."

Drawing on more than ten thousand pages of police and court findings and interviews with Danny's friends and family, fellow abuse victims, and church officials, the author uncovers the truth - church complicity in the cover-up and masking of priests' involvement in a ring of abusive clergy - behind Croteau's death and those who had a hand in it.

©2018 E. J. Fleming (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

excellent account of church pedaphiles. the murder

narrator is excellent. book very detailed and appalling. the murder is made more tragic by the cover up of church and police.

Priest gets away with murder.......

Why do people not educate their children about how these slime bags operate? Why didn't the parents understand what conditioning is? I would never let someone from the outside of the family get that close to my kids.....COMMON SENSE goes a long way too helping ýour children achieve boundaries that will save their lives.....also...quit living in fantasy land......teach them to always ĺisten to their inner voice that yells DANGER!!!!! RUN!!!!!! and be conscious of your kids actions......murder 101 folks......

Catholic Abuse & Cover Up

Story was told very well about an injustice serve on Danny & his loved ones

The Catholic Church is morally bankrupt!!

This book is extremely disturbing. I was raised Catholic, gave up on organized religion when I became old enough to learn what this religion is really all about. I could never support a religion that has protected child molesters for decades!! It actually makes me angry how they protected these monsters. I had a child molester priest in the church I belonged to. He died as a registered sex offender. This is a problem worldwide. There are thousands of men and women whose lives were ruined by the Catholic Church. The men who ignored and dismissed these crimes should rot in hell with the child molesters!!

Struggled to finish!

I struggled with this one! It angered me, broke my heart. A very good read!

Intriguing overall story

I thought this book would be only about the boy’s case but it goes into details about the Catholic Church corruption. There are topics in here I had not known prior. Very interesting.

Recycling Information

The reader was fantastic. The book however recycled a lot of the same facts over and over, which was annoying at times.

The author is obviously very educated on this crime and the individuals involved, he truly seemed to do extensive research. For a very long, detailed book, repeating information multiple times seemed unnecessary.

Ghastly story, flawed storytelling

The death of Danny Croteau is a heartbreaking story set within the larger frame of the indefensible coverup executed by the Catholic Church and the coddling of it’s criminal priests. It’s an important, shocking story that surely needed telling, but I have a few bones to pick with the storyteller. 1) Did I miss it or did the author fail to mention that after pleading guilty to molesting numerous boys in 1992 Lavigne was sentenced to a paltry 10 years of probation? 2) In May of this year, 2021 Lavigne died shortly before he was to be arrested, at long last, for Danny’s murder. Although the book was published in 2018 an afterward stating that important update should be added. 3) Author seems confused between the terms “sadist” and “masochist” at times describing Lavigne as a masochist before relaying clearly sadistic acts. 4) I do wish the author would have been responsible about drawing a line between homosexuality (everyone is an adult and a volunteer, often in loving relationships) and pedophilia (basically the incurable urge to rape children). They are not the same. Might as well say all heterosexuals are serial killers. Don’t we have enough bigotry already? My final beef is with the reader, who seemed to have 2 speeds: whispering and sarcastic sneering. Not that these sickos don’t deserve to be sneered at, but I can’t help but feel that the subject matter was disturbing enough to deserve a more sober presentation. That said, there is a tremendous amount of stunning information here, and the theory regarding the arrested development that may result from seminary life was new to me and thought provoking.

Good Overview of A Cold Case

Good overview of a tragic cold case. My one point on contention is it's one of those true crime books that edges a bit more to the graphic side, so just be aware of that. Not the best book to listen to on speaker at work. But, overall, I recommend.

The reader almost ruined the whole thing.

Mispronunciations. They are like shrieking horns. The only saving grace is that the reader mispronounces the word, in the same way, each time the word rolls around. And this reader adopts an attitude that I don't think the author had when writing. Anger. I can say that despite this defect I learned a lot. It reads more like a history of child molestation in central west Massachusetts. It could have been a good whodunnit but no. I think the book, therefore, is mistitled. That history is in fact so heinous that it was worth knowing about. There is little or nothing about Danny Couteau to speak of (the reader mispronounces even the boy's name). And the murder is NOT solved. Although the antagonist was at one point a suspect. In fact, he still lives in his mother's house. In the area where Danny was killed. The reader mispronounces the antagonist's name too. Levine (as if Jewish = Laveen instead of the French of Lavigne (Vine) in French it = La Veee-yeh. The man (when a priest) molested some 45 boys. He's got to be 80 soon. He was convicted of two instances of molestation. Did time and has since been released. Unless you really want to know the subject matter I'd pass.