US pastor houses child killer, riles town

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-18 11:18

CHICHESTER, N.H. -- A pastor in this quiet, picturesque town of New England thought he was doing the Christian thing when he took in a convicted child killer who had served his time but had nowhere to go.

But some neighbors of the Rev. David Pinckney vehemently disagree, one even threatening to burn his house down after officials could find no one else willing to take 60-year-old Raymond Guay.

This February 2007 photo released Monday March 16, 2009 by New Hampshire Department of Corrections in Concord, N.H., shows of former inmate and convicted child killer Raymond Guay, 60. A federal judge in California has ordered Guay to serve out 2-and-a-half years parole in New Hampshire where he has ties. Guay is now staying with a pastor, The Rev. David Pinckney in rural Chichester, N.H. [Agencies]

More than 200 town residents on Tuesday packed a selectmen's meeting, the first since news of Guay's arrival broke over the weekend. Most called for Guay's removal, claiming repeatedly that their children couldn't sleep and were afraid to play outside.

Lindsay Holden told the selectmen that she has met with state and federal officials and has pressed them to move Guay somewhere else for the sake of her children.

"I wouldn't be a good mom if I stood by and did nothing," she said.

Pinckney, pastor of the evangelical River of Grace Church a dozen miles west in Concord, and Guay, who was paroled in September after 35 years behind bars, did not attend the meeting.

Guay already had a criminal record when he was charged in 1973, at age 25, with abducting and murdering a 12-year-old boy in Nashua. Authorities said he planned to sexually assault the boy, whose body was clad only in socks and undershorts.

Guay pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to up to 25 years. He kidnapped a Concord couple after briefly escaping from the nearby state prison in 1982 and was sent to a federal prison in California, where he stabbed an inmate in 1991, court records show.

He was released from a federal prison in West Virginia in September after New Hampshire officials lost a bid to keep him incarcerated as a dangerous sexual predator under federal law.

After New Hampshire officials protested his relocation to Manchester last fall, Guay went to a halfway house in Connecticut. A judge recently ordered him to spend the remaining 2 1/2 years of his parole in New Hampshire.

Two rooming houses turned Guay away when he returned to Concord last week.

A Concord prison chaplain contacted Pinckney, who agreed to take Guay in after meeting him and clearing it with his wife and their four children living at home, ages 13 to 18. Their oldest son is away at college. Guay is staying with the family while he looks for a job and place to live.

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