Federal authorities search dump for Gagnon's laptop
Toolbox
By DANIEL BARLOW and THATCHER MOATS Times Argus Staff - Published: July 12, 2008
MONTPELIER — Federal authorities in Texas searched a landfill this week where they believe a laptop or hard drive containing evidence related to Brooke Bennett's disappearance and death last month may be located.
Erik Vasys, a spokesman for the FBI's regional office in San Antonio, Texas, said Friday that authorities are searching through trash and other waste at the Allied Waste Services Landfill off of Interstate 10 East.
That San Antonio landfill may be the dumping site for trash from a local apartment rented by Raymond Gagnon, Bennett's former stepfather who is facing charges in Alabama for possession of child pornography.
The 40-year-old Gagnon allegedly instructed his landlord last month to throw away a safe containing a computer stored at his apartment that police say contained volumes of child pornography, including sexual photos of an underage female witness involved in Bennett's disappearance.
"We are working to locate a hard drive or laptop computer that was disposed of at the instruction of Mr. Gagnon," Vasys said early Friday afternoon. "Based on information we have received, this landfill is the dumping site for trash from his apartment."
Gagnon's alleged role in Bennett's disappearance and death is not clear.
Police said he is the former husband of Bennett's mother, Cassandra Bennett, and is a close friend of the girl's uncle, Michael Jacques, who has been charged with her kidnapping.
Bennett's dead body was found near Jacques' home a week after she went missing. Jacques, a former sex offender who was released from probation from the Vermont Department of Corrections, was allegedly the last person to see Bennett alive.
Gagnon was arrested by police in Vermont on June 30 and originally charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly asking his landlord to dispose of the evidence. He is facing a charge of possession of child pornography in Alabama, where he also has a home, according to a federal affidavit from the Alabama courts.
Gagnon admitted to police that he accessed Bennett's MySpace page using a laptop taken from the safe in Texas. According to another affidavit in the case, Gagnon asked his landlord there to dispose of his computer as part of a ruse with Jacques to make it look like the girl ran away with a boyfriend.
Gagnon told investigators that when he heard Bennett was missing, he flew from San Antonio to Burlington by way of Cullman, Ala., where he owned a home, according to the affidavit.
While in Cullman, Gagnon told authorities, he tried to access Bennett's MySpace page from a local library. After seeing Gagnon on national news, a former co-worker of Gagnon's in Cullman tipped authorities off to the fact that Gagnon owned a home there.
Authorities did a public records search and found that Gagnon did own the home along with a woman, according to the affidavit, and that he obtained an Alabama driver's license in 2006.
Federal authorities seized computers and a disk from Gagnon's Alabama home that contained child pornography, according to the affidavit. Gagnon admitted the computers were his, and the images were found in a file linked to the username "Ray," investigators said.
He also admitted to having sexually explicit contact with a minor in South Royalton in 2007 and to owning "vast" amounts of child pornography, according to the affidavit.
Vasys would not say how long the FBI has been searching the landfill, only that the process continued through Friday. He described the process as tedious as investigators dig through week's worth of trash at the site.
"We're treating it like a crime scene," he said. "We're excavating part of the landfill."
U.S. Attorney Thomas Anderson, who is prosecuting Jacques for Bennett's kidnapping, declined comment Friday on the search, saying investigators would not comment on an ongoing case.
Jacques is being held in a Vermont prison on $250,000 bail and is expected back in U.S. District Court in Burlington on July 17 for a probable cause hearing. He faces the possibility of life in prison or the death penalty if convicted.
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