Twenty-two-year-old Doreen Picard was nearing completion of her college studies and about to begin a career in childhood development. On February 19, 1982, she was preparing to move into a new apartment. Instead, her last day at her first apartment was also the last day of her life. If she had moved the day before or after, she would likely not be a subject of this write-up.

That afternoon, Doreen was brutally beaten to death in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, fifteen miles northwest of Providence. She, however, is not believed to be the prey of her killer and was murdered only because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The murder of Doreen Picard is officially closed as a man stands legally convicted of the crime. The case, however, is still convoluted as the conviction carries the caveat of the court’s legally recognizing his profession of innocence.

Doreen Picard

Doreen and her boyfriend, Raymond Beaulieu, were preparing to move from their third floor apartment in the triple-decker complex owned by Ernie Laferte and his twenty-seven-year-old wife, Susan. The couple and their two daughters, three-year-old Nichole and fifteen-month-old Marie, lived on the first floor.

Susan, a housewife, headed a citizen’s crime watch group. She, along with Doreen, soon became the victims of a brutal crime.

The Laferte Family

As Doreen spent the early afternoon packing in preparation for moving, Susan and her sister, Carol Rivet, ate lunch together in Susan’s apartment. Ernie was not at home at the time.

At 1:30 p.m., two men came to the apartment. Carol recognized one of them as Raymond Tempest, a construction worker. Susan introduced her to the second man, John Allard, who, at the time, was living with Raymond’s former sister-in-law, Sherri Richards.

The Laferte’s pit bull had recently given birth to a litter of puppies. For lending his male pit bull for the breeding, Raymond was given his choice of the puppies. He, in turn, had promised the dog to John, as his two small children were asking for a puppy.

The group chatted in the doorway for approximately five minutes before the men went to look at the puppies. John picked a puppy, and the men left approximately ten minutes later.

Carol went home shortly thereafter, at approximately 1:45 p.m.

Carol Rivet

Susan’s Sister

At approximately 3:20 p.m., fifteen-year-old Lisa Wells returned to the apartment complex where she lived with her mother and stepfather. As she entered through the back door, she recalled seeing a large maroon car parked in the driveway adjacent to the bulkhead leading into the building’s cellar. She did not recognize the car but thought nothing of its being there.

Upon entering the building, Lisa heard what she called “rumblings” coming from the basement. Not believing they were anything serious, she did not investigate.

On her way to her second floor apartment, Lisa saw three-year-old Nichole crying on the stairs. Nichole told Lisa her mom was “downstairs sick,” but Lisa thought it was only a ploy for attention and continued upstairs.

Approximately ten minutes later, Lisa’s stepfather, Doug Heath, entered the building, also through the back door. He did not hear the rumblings that Lisa had earlier heard, but he also encountered Nichole crouched on the first-floor landing next to the basement doorway. She was crying and agitated; when Doug asked her where mommy was, Nichole said she was lying down and pointed to the basement.

Sensing something was wrong, Doug proceeded to the basement. On his way, he passed Susan’s ground-floor apartment. He attempted to enter, but the door was locked.

The laundry room was in the basement. Upon entry, Doug found multiple items of clothes strewn across the floor. The clothes were still dirty, but they were nothing compared to the washer and dryer, both of which were plastered with blood.

Doug Heath

Apartment Resident

Between the appliances lay a bludgeoned woman; beside the dryer was a second woman. Both were so covered in blood that Doug could not recognize them. When paramedics arrived at the complex, they parked in the spot Lisa had seen occupied by the maroon car approximately twenty minutes earlier.

The women were identified as apartment residents Doreen Picard and Susan Laferte. Doreen was pronounced dead at the scene; unconscious but still alive, Susan was rushed to the hospital. Doctors were able to stabilize her breathing, but she lapsed into a coma.  When she awoke thirty days later, she could not recall the attack. Her last recollections were of events occurring at the end of 1981; she had no memories of the New Year.

Both women had been brutally beaten with a blunt object. A blood-soaked twenty-eight inch metal pipe found in a closet four days later was confirmed as the murder weapon. It had been wiped of fingerprints, and all of the blood on it was from the two women.

                                      Doreen Dies             Susan Survives

Doreen Picard had been beaten so viciously the funeral home had to reconstruct her head and face to make her presentable for viewing.  Her boyfriend, Raymond Beaulieu, was cleared of any involvement in her murder, and no one else with whom she was associated emerged as a person of interest.

Soon, investigators came to believe that Doreen was not the intended target and was only killed because she was in the way.

Doreen Is Not The Target

Susan’s mother-in-law, Florence Laferte, told investigators that Nichole said she had seen the man believed to have been the attacker. The following is what Florence says her three-year-old granddaughter told her.

Florence Laferte 

Susan’s Mother-In-Law

Nichole told her grandmother she had let the man into the apartment building. The man said he was Susan’s friend and asked where she was; Nichole told him she was in the basement doing laundry.

A short time later, Nichole, locked out of the apartment, heard noises from the basement and went down the stairs as the man was coming upstairs. He left through the front door of the apartment complex.

As Nichole entered the basement, she found her mom and another woman lying on the floor; she believed they were sleeping.

Florence says Nichole told her the man had a moustache, was a little bigger than her father, and wore sneakers, blue jeans, and a cap with the visor turned backwards. Nicole also said she saw a red and white rag hanging from the back of his pocket when he returned from the basement. This was most likely a cloth or handkerchief with blood from the two women.

Police say Nichole’s story changed each time they spoke to her and was too inconsistent to be of any value to them.

Susan And Nichole

Two ads placed by the Lafertes ran in the local newspaper on the day of the attack. One was for the puppies, the other was for an apartment for rent. Police believe the attacker may have responded to one of these ads.

The Advertisements

In the months following the attack, Ron and Simone Picard conducted their own informal investigation into their daughter’s murder. They soon received several anonymous early morning phone calls warning them to drop the matter.  In one call, Ron says a man threatened to harm his other children and burn down his auto repair shop.

Police never determined who made the harassing phone calls.

Ron And Simone Picard

Doreen’s Parents

The murder of Doreen Picard and the attempted murder of Susan Laferte went cold. Authorities were hopeful that Susan’s memory of the attack would return, but it did not. Nine years later, however, a break in the case led police to the man who had been considered a strong suspect from the beginning: Raymond Tempest.

On June 4, 1991, Tempest, nicknamed Beaver, was arrested for the murders of Doreen Picard and the attempted murder of Susan Laferte after four people told authorities how he had bragged about committing the crime and that his police connections had protected him. He was from a prominent local family who had members that had served in the Woonsocket Police Department. At the time of his arrest, his father, Raymond Sr., was second in command and his brother, Gordon, was a Lieutenant.

   

Raymond “Beaver” Tempest

Raymond Tempest and Susan Laferte had known each other for most of their lives and had been close friends; Susan had served as the maid of honor at Tempest’s wedding.

Acquaintances said Susan and Tempest were having an affair; a friend of both parties said Susan told her she was planning to leave Ernie and was expecting Tempest to leave his wife, Jane, from whom he was separated.  Susan subsequently admitted to engaging in two extra-marital affairs but claimed she could not recall with whom.

Bad Beaver

Tempest’s confessions to all four people were generally the same. He said he returned to Susan’s apartment complex approximately a half-hour after getting the puppy. When he arrived, he found Susan in the basement doing her laundry. They began arguing after he told her he was reconciling with his wife.

When the argument escalated, he grabbed a pipe he saw in the laundry room and began beating Susan. As he was doing so, Doreen came to the basement to do her laundry and attempted to help Susan, but he overpowered her and beat her to death. He then continued beating Susan to the point where he believed he had killed her as well.

One of the people to whom Tempest confessed said he had what appeared to be fresh bite or scratch mark on his wrist. Other evidence, as well, seemed to link Tempest to the crime.

At the time of the attack, his brother-in-law, Bobby Monteiro, owned a four-door maroon sedan which Tempest was seen driving both shortly before and after the attack. The car matched the vehicle seen by Lisa Wells.

When initially questioned by police shortly after the attack, Tempest lied about his alibi. He said he did so because he was smoking marijuana and trying to buy cocaine at the time and did not want to embarrass his family. Multiple people also told investigators Tempest asked them to provide his alibi.

Tempest later recanted the confessions saying he was drunk and high on pot when he made them.

Multiple Confessions

On April 22, 1992, just over a decade after the attack and following a two-week trial in which over eighty people were called to testify, “Beaver” Tempest was convicted of the second-degree murder of Doreen Picard and the attempted murder of Susan Laferte.

He was sentenced to eighty-five years in prison.

The Beaver Is Sent Behind Bars

Woonsocket Police Lieutenant Gordon Tempest was sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of perjury at his brother’s trial.  Raymond had bragged that his law enforcement allies had directed evidence away from him and his brother was found to have tampered with evidence in the investigation of the crime scene, including wiping the fingerprints from the murder weapon (the pipe) and moving it to the closet.  Although not proven, prosecutors also claimed that the Tempest family intimidated witnesses to keep quiet.

Gordon Tempest professes his innocence and has a large number of supporters. The apartment tenant who said she saw him wipe and move the pipe was a known drug user whose credibility is doubled by many.

In addition, Gordon believes he was framed by a colleague. In 1987, five years after the attack and four years before his brother was arrested for the crime, Gordon was among the policemen who busted a chop shop owned by a man named Stanley Irza, who was the brother-in-law of Rodney Remblad, one of the chief investigators. A deal was struck in which Irza received a lighter sentence, Gordon claims, by providing false information linking Raymond to the 1982 attack.

Gordon contends that Remblad did not like him and used his brother’s case as a stepping stone to becoming Woonsocket Police Chief.

Gordon Tempest

Raymond’s Brother

Raymond Tempest professed his innocence and appealed his conviction. The New England Innocence Project accepted his case in 2014 and requested DNA testing on three hairs found on Doreen’s hand. The results showed that two of hairs were not from Tempest while testing of the third hair was inconclusive.

The hairs, however, are probably not of great significance as the roots were not attached and they were found to be from two different people. Authorities believe they likely came from the basement floor.

 Beaver Has Supporters

In July 2015, Rhode Island State Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini vacated Raymond Tempest’s conviction. The ruling was not the result of the DNA findings; it was instead rendered after suggestions of prosecutorial misconduct and witness coaching surfaced.  In addition, the testimony of the four people who said Tempest had confessed to the attack were deemed unreliable because all had criminal pasts and histories of alcohol and drug abuse.

After serving over twenty-three-years in prison, Raymond Tempest was released on bail while prosecutors mulled whether to retry him. In March 2017, they announced they planned to do so.

Conviction Vacated

In December, however, the ordeal was resolved in an unusual manner when Tempest was offered the seldom-used “Alford Plea,” a legal option available allowing a defendant to plead guilty to a crime while still maintaining his or her innocence. By entering an Alford plea, Tempest claimed his innocence but agreed that there was enough evidence to convict him.

As a result of the plea, Tempest would serve no more prison time.

“I Wanted To Go To Trial, But I Wasn’t Going To Gamble With My Life”

The murder of Doreen Picard and the attempted murder of Susan Laferte is now a closed case.

Though his claims of innocence are officially recognized, Raymond “Beaver” Tempest is, officially, the culprit.

Convicted But With a Caveat

In December 2020, Tempest sued the City of Woonsocket, Former Police Chief Remblad, and retired Woonsocket Sergeant Ronald Pennington. The lawsuit claims law enforcement concealed evidence to gain his conviction and coached multiple witnesses of questionable credibility to testify against him.

The lawsuit, still pending, further asserts that Woonsocket investigators deprived Tempest of his constitutional right to a fair trial by failing to conduct an adequate investigation and not pursuing leads which corroborated his innocence.

Tempest Sues

The Picard family is convinced that Raymond Tempest is the killer of their daughter. The Laferte family, however, believes otherwise, insisting the real culprit is a man named Donald Dagesse, who had died in 2011.

Degasse was among those who attended the repast following Doreen’s funeral. Several of Susan’s relatives say Nichole became frightened after seeing him and told them he was the man who had “boomed Mama.” Raymond Tempest also attended the event, but elicited no such reactions from the child. Nichole also came across him several times in the following months and never expressed any feelings that he had been the attacker.

In addition, after Susan first awoke from her coma, relatives say she identified Dagesse as the attacker. She was unable to speak but family members say she identified him after they went through the alphabet spelling the name, with her nodding when they came to a correct letter. After having a few letters, one relative says he asked Susan if Dagesse was the attacker and that Susan nodded yes. When Susan made a full recovery, however, she had no recollection of the beating or of naming Dagesse as her attacker.

Susan’s sister-in-law claims Dagesse, while visiting Susan in the hospital, made incriminating statements, and another woman reported she received several anonymous phone calls from a man confessing to the attack. She believed the caller sounded like Dagesse.

Dagsse’s alibi for the day of the attack could not be confirmed and he reportedly made incriminating statements to multiple acquaintances.  No physical evidence, however, links him to attacks on Doreen Picard and Susan Laferte.

Donald Dagesse

Susan Laferte largely recovered from the attack, but she did incur several permanent physical injuries that continue to hinder her, including a broken eardrum and only partial use of her right hand. She also often loses her balance when standing or walking.

After over forty years, she is still unable to recall the attack that nearly left her dead.

Susan Recovered

But With Ramifications

Regardless of who her killer is, Doreen Picard was the unfortunate victim of the most awful timing. Had she done her laundry perhaps as little as fifteen minutes earlier or waited fifteen minutes later, she would likely still be alive today.

Terrible Timing

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/154278274/doreen-c.-picard 

 

SOURCES:

• Boston Globe
• JUSTIA LAW State v. Tempest
• Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun
• Providence Journal
• Unsolved Mysteries
• The Woonsocket Call