CHICHESTER, N.H. — A pastor in this quiet, picturesque New England town 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.
“Politicians think they can dump their trash in our small town,” said one neighbor, Jon Morales, whose girlfriend and two children live across a road from Pinckney’s home.
Chichester, a town of about 2,200 residents in south-central New Hampshire, has been in an uproar since the weekend, when police announced that Guay would spend two months with Pinckney’s family.
About 40 residents protested at the home Saturday, Merrimack County Sheriff Scott Hilliard said. One man threatened to set it on fire, he said.
Town leaders were expected to ask officials to move Guay.
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.
After 35 years behind bars, he was released in September and ordered to serve his parole in New Hampshire. Guay’s release followed a failed attempt by state officials to keep him incarcerated as a dangerous sexual predator under federal law.
A Concord prison chaplain contacted Pinckney, who agreed to take Guay in after meeting him and clearing it with his wife and four children, ages 13 to 18. Guay is staying there while he looks for a job and a place to live.
“We would not be doing this if we thought we were endangering our town, neighbors or children,” Pinckney wrote in a letter to his town.
