PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Raymond D. “Beaver” Tempest Jr. was convicted Monday for the second time in the brutal murder of homecoming queen Doreen C. Picard in Woonsocket nearly 36 years ago.
The Alford plea accepted by Superior Court Judge Robert Krause means that Tempest maintains his innocence, while admitting the state could have proved a charge of second-degree murder. “I’m more than satisfied there’s ample evidence ... that the defendant would be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” the judge said.
Tempest, 64, was first convicted in 1992 and sentenced to 85 years in prison. He served 24 years and 7 months before Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Procaccini vacated his conviction.
Procaccini found that police and prosecutors had violated Tempest’s right to a fair trial by coaching witnesses, failing to disclose evidence and suppressing key details about a witness’s changing statements.
The state Supreme Court upheld Procaccini’s decision in 2016 and ruled Tempest should have a new trial. A retrial was set to go before Krause in February.
As a result of the plea, Tempest will serve no additional prison time.
When given an opportunity to speak in court, Tempest said nothing. He did not look back at the rows of Picard’s loved ones in the courtroom. He left quickly with supporters and his lawyers, who worked on his behalf through the New England Innocence Project.
In a statement after the conviction, Tempest’s lawyers said that “serious issues of police and prosecutorial misconduct remain unresolved."
“Raymond has shown tremendous courage and dignity in his quest for justice,” said attorney Michael Kendall. “However, given the repeated destruction and loss of evidence by the police and the long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct that has riddled this case from the start, he has been put in an untenable position and reluctantly accepted a plea deal.
“Mr. Tempest never should have been convicted in the first place,” Kendall said.
Ron and Simone Picard, together 58 years, have spent more than half of their married lives seeking justice in the murder of their 22-year-old daughter. Monday was their last time in court, and they sat in the front row to see Tempest accept his conviction.
Picard’s younger sister, Christine Sawicki, spoke for her family and told the court about their memories.
Doreen Picard was the oldest of four children in a close-knit family, growing up in Bellingham, Massachusetts. The sisters and their mother last spoke together on the phone on Feb. 18, 1982, a lighthearted discussion of dinner plans and new curtains — Picard was in the middle of moving to a new apartment.
The next day, Doreen Picard’s bludgeoned and strangled body was discovered in the basement at 409 Providence St., along with her landlord, Susan Laferte, who was so badly injured that she had no memory of the attack.
Prosecutors say that Tempest had gone to the apartment house with a friend who was picking up a pit-bull puppy from a litter that belonged to him and Laferte.
They say that Tempest and Laferte got into an argument that turned violent — and Picard happened upon them when she went into the laundry room. They believe that Picard tried to intervene, but Tempest turned on her, strangling the 120-pound woman with her own sweater and beating her with a 28-inch metal pipe.
Her sister was brave to try to save another person’s life, Sawicki told the court. “Her actions demonstrate she was selfless, always trying to do the right thing,” she said.
Doreen Picard was buried in her prom dress and wearing her rosary; the funeral home had to reconstruct her head and face to hide the damage caused by her murderer, Sawicki said.
The killing was “barbaric, savage and senseless,” Sawicki said.
Tempest is from a family of generations of high-ranking Woonsocket officers. Prosecutors said that, after the murder, Tempest boasted to friends that he would “slide” from prosecution because his father was Providence County high sheriff and his brother was a Woonsocket detective. He was indicted a decade later and convicted in 1992.
The case stained the reputation of the Woonsocket Police Department, where officers and the chief were accused of purposely undermining the murder investigation in Tempest’s favor. His brother, a police lieutenant who took Tempest’s first statement, was convicted of perjury. The chief was suspended, and later cleared, of allegations that he meddled in the case.
In maintaining his innocence, Tempest testified that he went to the apartment house to pick up a puppy, then spent the day drinking beer and getting high when Picard was killed.
His appeal case was taken up by White & Case partner Kendall, who was working pro bono on behalf of the New England Innocence Project, along with Providence lawyers Lauren E. Jones and John E. MacDonald, and Betty Anne Waters of Bristol. They won Tempest's release on bail in 2015, after Procaccini vacated his conviction.
An Alford plea is extremely rare, MacDonald said. "This is a case where the defense is firmly convinced [they're representing] an innocent person, but it's not worth the risk of going to trial," he said.
Tempest will return to his job in construction, now without an ankle bracelet, MacDonald said. He lives in Warwick, where he is in touch with his three children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Sawicki said her family believes in a higher justice.
“This blatant disregard for human life is not only judged by man," she told the court. "It’s judged by God."