Podcasts about Springfield, Massachusetts

A man remembers his grandmother's funeral mass at St. Mary's. Within a week or two of Danny Croteau's murder, he says, there was talk in the neighborhood. When he looked up at the altar and saw which priest was saying the mass, he knew. The priest was Richard Lavigne. The conversation comes from "Unholy Fathers, E14 Richard Lavigne Got Away with Murder, Part 1", an episode of Fake Shaman.

This is what Springfield, Massachusetts sounds like on PlayNext. The scene is small and grave. It sits inside a strand of a reported true-crime show from Crash Barry: the Unholy Fathers episodes. The show describes them as dealing with priests, survivors, police files and diocesan review boards.

What Springfield is

Springfield is the largest city in western Massachusetts. It sits on the Connecticut River in Hampden County. It is known as the place where basketball was invented, and for the Springfield Armory, a former federal arsenal that is now a national historic site. It is also the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese.

The Croteau case

The Lavigne clip is a conversation between two voices. One of them did a multi-part series on Danny Croteau's murder, which ran in April 2017. They say many people take the case to be closed, when there are still so many unanswered questions. They set out to go through the findings in detail, and they stop to offer condolences to members of the Croteau family, whom they both know. Another clip from the same episode centers on an admission: as the episode presents it, Lavigne concedes that he shoved Danny Croteau before the death at the river.

The show builds its cases in the open. It moves from a detail in a file to a quote, then to a timeline, then to a stated conclusion, and it does not soften what it finds. Fake Shaman also follows a separate case in Maine, under its own episode titles.

A survivor's account

The Unholy Fathers episodes also carry survivor testimony. Clips from "Unholy Fathers, E16 She was Haunted by a Bloody Priest, Part 1" follow a woman referred to as C. One describes, in explicit physical detail, a priest named Sullivan pinning her against a wall. Another stays with her rehearsal dinner, where the smell of gin and tonic set off shaking, crying and panic.

Where to start

• For the Croteau case: Fake Shaman's "Unholy Fathers, E14 Richard Lavigne Got Away with Murder, Part 1", followed by "Unholy Fathers, E15 Richard Lavigne Got Away with Murder, Part 2".
• For survivor testimony: Fake Shaman's "Unholy Fathers, E16 She was Haunted by a Bloody Priest, Part 1" and its continuation, "Unholy Fathers, E17 She was Haunted by a Bloody Priest, Part 2". The Part 1 clips are graphic.

The Springfield feed on this page plays clips from Fake Shaman, including the Unholy Fathers moments described above.