‘I cannot help myself from doing these things’
Predator’s long history of offenses
Wayne Chapman has admitted to molesting up to 100 boys across multiple states and remains a suspect in the 1976 disappearance of a 10-year-old Lawrence boy.
Until Friday, when a Middlesex Superior Court jury in Woburn cleared him of lewdness charges, he had been civilly committed since the state deemed him too dangerous to release after his prison sentence for raping two boys in Lawrence expired in 2004.
Two state-appointed examiners under contract for the Department of Correction ruled last year that Chapman, at 71, was too frail to reoffend. It’s a decision that has angered victims and resulted in new legislation being filed by Gov. Charlie Baker.
But Chapman’s story, spelled out in shocking detail in past prison reports, tells the story of a predator who terrorized young boys all over the east. Records state:
■ He tortured cats as a youth, “locking them in boxes and leaving them to starve” in the woods. He also killed a cat with bricks.
■ Made advances on an 11-year-old stepson.
■ Promised a paper route to a 12-year-old boy in Pennsylvania as a ruse to lure him into the woods and molest him.
■ Once fantasized about “fondling and killing a kid.”
■ Carried a receipt for “the purchase of a boys wallet,” according to an entry dated Feb. 24.
■ Prison staff saying he has “his own agenda” and is capable of getting around.
■ An entry from 2015 states Chapman is “still capable of sexual functioning.”
■ In the 1970s, at the height of his attacks on “50-100” boys, he said: “I need help because I cannot help myself from doing these things.”
Chapman has said he’s considering a move to Worcester or Cumberland, Maine. He also has a friend in New Bedford, he told one examiner.
He also says in the unredacted prison examiner reports that he dreams of driving a car “when he is released.”
He has not, however, spoken about being a suspect in the unsolved Aug. 21, 1976, disappearance of 10-year-old Andy Puglisi of Lawrence.