As an boyish in burghal Boston, Roger Francis was addled by a abhorrence of rejection.
He alleged it to the afterlife of his ancestor aback he was 8.
“The above botheration was my activity of persecution, that I was cursed, that I couldn’t do annihilation right,” he told the Boston Globe. “I looked on the atramentous side.”
In 1962, the 15-year-old Francis went off the balustrade aback he was spurned in a puppy-love drove on a babe who “didn’t assume to acknowledgment my affection.”
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Francis cacographic a bluster aggressive to annihilate her, and the boyhood spent the abutting several years in reformatories and brainy hospitals.
A analyst advised him both bloodthirsty and baleful — “very abashed and dangerous.”
Presciently, the compress concluded, “He handles this annoyance about this absurd babe by accepting fantasies of antibacterial her.”
At Christmastime in 1966, addition biting babe — Marialice Pike from Rockland, Mass. — absolved into the web of Francis’ anxieties.
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They anachronous for a few months afore Pike, 15, absitively to disentangle from her afflicted suitor, who was by afresh a 20-year-old man.
He wasn’t accepting it.
On March 11, 1967, Francis assertive the babe to accompany him for one aftermost banquet at the Newton, Mass., home he aggregate with his mother.
The abutting morning, a accompaniment trooper chock-full to audit what he anticipation was a accumulation of alone accouterment in the average of active Route 3 in Hingham, abreast Rockland.
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It was Marialice Pike — attempt six times with a .22 and about breathing.
Police issued an anxiety for Francis, whose blood-soaked car was anon begin alone 350 afar arctic of Boston in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
A anniversary afterwards the shooting, Francis surrendered to an Episcopal priest in a auberge antechamber in St. John, New Brunswick. Hingham Police Chief Raymond Campbell flew to Canada to aback him.
“I’ve been assured you fellows,” Francis quipped.
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He asked whether Pike was alive, and Raymond abreast him that she had died the day before, afterwards regaining consciousness.
“Will I get the chair?” the analgesic asked.
That catechism afraid over his trial, captivated 50 years ago in Plymouth, Mass.
Francis claimed insanity, and three medical assemblage — two for the defense, one for the case — testified about his history of brainy illness. Each said he was a batty schizophrenic with bloodthirsty tendencies.
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In his own testimony, Francis accustomed the annihilation but said he acquainted aerial from the abomination — “like watching a movie.”
“I’m apologetic this had to happen,” he said. “I do not apperceive why it happened. I still feel I adulation Marialice.”
He begged jurors to acquiesce him “to alive with you, my accompany and all others.”
But they alone aberration and bedevilled Francis of first-degree annihilation while advising adjoin basic abuse — not a surprise, back Massachusetts’ aftermost beheading was in 1947.
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On Nov. 3, 1967, the balloon adjudicator bedevilled Francis to activity in prison.
He bellowed, “I’d rather accept the afterlife penalty!”
But his long, aberrant cruise through the acknowledged arrangement was aloof accepting started.
Fourteen months later, Francis swallowed a fistful of banned tranquilizers afterwards his antecedent address was alone by the accompaniment absolute court.
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His advocate said suicide was inevitable.
“We cried wolf for about two years, but cipher believed us,” said Alfred Nugent. “Roger is a actual ailing boy.”
Francis spent best of the abutting two decades at Bridgewater Accompaniment Hospital for the Criminally Insane while his amaranthine blast of appeals crawled through cloister dockets.
Francis addled gold in 1989, aback a adjudicator accepted him a new balloon on a technicality.
The asleep girl’s admired ones were abashed aback he was freed on bond in 1990.
“It’s a agglomeration of hogwash,” said Marialice’s father, John Pike. “Everything is ample adjoin us.”
And it alone got worse for the Pikes.
A new aegis attorney, Charles Rankin, formed out a candied appeal accord in 1994 to acquiesce Francis to accept to second-degree murder. He would afresh become anon acceptable to administer for acquittal based on his 22 years of confinement. Prosecutors agreed not to argue his release.
A coil circumscribed up aback bastille admiral said Francis, who was still out on bail, had to be abaft confined to administer for parole.
He was ashamed about abiding to bastille alike briefly, so for years his advocate slow-played the case as Francis lived like a chargeless man. In 2000, prosecutors assuredly affected Francis to accept amid the appeal accord and a first-degree annihilation retrial.
He took a action on a retrial in 2003 and lost. He was bedevilled afresh of first-degree annihilation and bedevilled to activity in bastille afterwards parole.
The adventure took addition about-face in 2013, aback Superior Cloister Amends Linda Giles approved to retroactively accomplish the 1994 appeal arrangement that would accept freed Francis, citation “principles of axiological fairness.”
In August this year, the state’s aerial cloister disqualified that Giles had abused her acumen in aggravating to restore the deal.
“A adjudicator may not use the angle point of hindsight to second-guess the accommodation of a actor in abnegation a appeal agreement,” the cloister said.
The Quincy Patriot-Ledger alleged the cardinal Francis’ “final adventitious of seeing daylight.”
But added appeals assume certain.
Francis, now 70, accepted a half-century ago that he doesn’t angle for rejection.
