RSSNew Details of Uncle’s Arrest Record Emerge in Vermont Death Case
Carolyn Hileman - The Voice | July 5, 2008
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Prosecutors on Thursday filed federal kidnapping charges that carry the death penalty against a man whose niece was found buried near his home after being missing for a week as new details emerged about the uncle’s arrest record.
Officials said they’ve found no new evidence of a wider child sex ring beyond an underage girl’s claim to them that she was in it and 12-year-old Brooke Bennett was to be initiated into it the day she disappeared.
There’s nothing from this investigation that’s been turned up, nor otherwise are federal and state authorities aware of, any ongoing efforts to recruit young girls or boys here in Vermont to have sex with adults,” Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell said at a joint news conference with federal prosecutors.
Depending on how Brooke died, prosecutors said her uncle, Michael Jacques, 42, could face the death penalty under the federal kidnapping law.
U.S. Attorney Tom Anderson said the 2006 Adam Walsh law — named for another abducted child — allowed federal prosecution of such crimes when they are facilitated by the Internet.
Asked whether he will seek the death penalty, Anderson said: “That determination will be made after the investigation is completed, after the case is presented to a grand jury and ultimately that decision is made by the attorney general of the United States of America.”
Jacques’ lawyer, federal public defender Michael Desautels, did not return calls Thursday.
This is not the first time Jacques has been in trouble. In 1993, he was sentenced to six to 20 years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping and raping an 18-year-old woman he supervised at a Rutland restaurant, court records show.
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