By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org

A former Keene police officer suing to get his name removed from the state’s Laurie List has a discipline record identical to former Keene Police Lt. James McLaughlin.

The lawsuit, which could head to trial early next year, was filed under a John Doe pseudonym in December of 2021, weeks before the first public Laurie List would be published by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

McLaughlin, who retired in 2019, is a respected investigator who became famous for using the Internet to target alleged child sex predators. His name appeared on the first Laurie List released on Dec. 29, 2021, though it was removed a few hours later.

McLaughlin’s status on the list of New Hampshire cops with credibility problems is seemingly confirmed by the lawsuit, which details the discipline that led to John Doe’s placement. The details of the John Doe discipline incidents match the records InDepthNH.org obtained through a right-to-know request seeking McLaughlin’s file. Biographical details about Doe and his career also point to McLaughlin.

Doe’s lawsuit claims the officer has dedicated his life to protecting “the most vulnerable in our society (children.)” Doe claims the decades old discipline incidents should not be used to tarnish his otherwise exemplary career. 

McLaughlin is now an investigator with the Cheshire County Attorney’s Office and didn’t return a message seeking comment. 

Under the law making the Laurie List public, officers on the list are given the opportunity to bring a lawsuit to get their names removed. While that lawsuit is pending, their names are redacted from the publicly available list. There are dozens of pending Laurie List lawsuits.

According to the lawsuit, Doe was placed on the Laurie List in 2018 by the Keene Police Department for incidents that had taken place decades earlier. One incident involved Doe attempting to shoot a hole in a beer keg when he went to break up a teen drinking party. Doe was disciplined for initially lying about the shooting, telling a superior officer that a firework had gone off at the party.

According to the records obtained by InDepthNH.org, McLaughlin was suspended for firing his gun during the first reported incident. McLaughlin and another officer went to an area off Drummer Road to break up a teen drinking party in November of 1986.

After the teens fled the approaching officers, McLaughlin and his partner, Edwin Bourassa, put out the fire. McLaughlin then decided to destroy the beer and took out his service revolver and fired two shots at the remaining beer kegs, according to then Keene Police Chief Harold Becotte’s disciplinary letter. 

“Officer Bourassa did not have any part in making this decision and, in fact, was quite shocked by Officer McLaughlin’s action,” the letter states. “Officer McLaughlin felt that the kegs were far too heavy and cumbersome to carry the long distance out of the woods and that no one would be in danger if he shot holes into them.”

The other Doe discipline incident involved a verbal altercation with a citizen during which Doe reportedly used profanity. There was also an allegation that Doe tampered with the police department’s audio tape of the incident. While Doe was disciplined for the altercation, the allegation of evidence tampering seems unfounded, according to the lawsuit.

According to the records obtained by InDepthNH.org, McLaughlin received a letter of reprimand from then-Chief Thomas Powers in the spring of 1988, after McLaughlin was involved in the December, 1987 verbal confrontation with a civilian on the phone, and later inside the station. It was during this incident that the audio recording of the phone call was destroyed under suspicious circumstances, according to Powers’ letter.

“In the subsequent interview concerning the incident, no reasonable reason for the blank tape was found and an electronic examination of the tape revealed unintelligible voices,” Powers wrote. “You provided statements that you had ‘words’ with the complainant and had rewound the tape to get his name, yet did not purposefully erase any part thereof. You could not explain the misfiling of the tape, nor why the log did not indicate the tape cleaning or changing at 2400 hours.”

Powers indicates that McLaughlin already in 1988 had a record for bad behavior as a police officer.

“I reviewed your personnel files and several internal affairs investigations. While you have accumulated a number of praises in your career, a disproportionate number of serious accusations and violations have significantly detracted from your record, including a one-week suspension,” Powers wrote.

Powers called McLaughin’s explanation for the tape erasure “unacceptable,” though he did not impose any suspension for the matter. Powers encouraged McLaughlin to use the reprimand as motivation to change his attitude. 

The Doe lawsuit was originally filed under seal in the Cheshire Superior Court in Keene. After the New Hampshire American Civil Liberties Union intervened, redacted copies of the complaint and other documents were made available in 2022. 

The court is considering dispositive motions to resolve the case without trial over the coming weeks. If the court rules against the motions to resolve the case without a trial, one will be scheduled in early 2024. 

McLaughlin became famous in the late 1990s and early 2000s for pretending to be a teen online and getting men he encountered to engage in sexual discussions with his alter ego. The conversations would invariably result in the men agreeing to travel to Keene to have sex with the teen/McLaughlin. It was in Keene that the men would be arrested.

McLaughlin was censured in a 1997 case involving a Vermont man, Lee Allaben. According to court records, McLaughlin, posing as a teen, sent Allaben a child sex abuse image in order to assure the man he was not really a police officer. Allaben responded by sending images of his own. He then reportedly made arrangements to meet the teen/McLaughlin in Keene for sex, and it was there he was arrested and charged with attempted coercion, interstate travel for sexual act with a juvenile, and distribution of child sex abuse images. Allaben would go on to plead guilty to charges in the case.

In 1998, a federal appeals court threw out the conviction of a Massachusetts man, Paul George Gamache, who traveled to Keene initially to have sex with someone he thought was an adult woman, but who turned out to be McLaughlin. During the online discussions with McLaughlin, Gamache was offered, and agreed, to have sex with a minor. The First Circuit Appeals Court in Boston ruled that McLaughlin had entrapped Gamache.

“It was the government that first mentioned the children as sex objects … It was the government that escalated the subject of sex with children,” the appeals court ruled.

In 2016, Adelbert Warner II, and three other men, all prosecuted and imprisoned after they were investigated by McLaughlin, filed a lawsuit claiming McLaughlin had altered the text conversations used to help prosecute them. That lawsuit was eventually dismissed on technicalities, in part, because it was filed past the relevant statute of limitations.

McLaughlin investigated hundreds of cases in New Hampshire, and would go on to lecture other police departments on how to emulate his techniques. In 2016, McLaughlin was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the New Hampshire Police, Fire and EMS Foundation.