By NANCY WEST, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – Ten months after the murder of James Dale, the Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday that Robert Lavoie, 57, has been indicted in Dale’s death.
Lavoie and Dale, 65, were both inmates at the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin when Dale was killed Feb. 13.
Lavoie, who is still in the state’s custody, was indicted on one count of first-degree murder for purposefully causing Dale’s death by striking him with a metal pipe, according to the attorney general’s news release.
The release doesn’t say why Lavoie was incarcerated in the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin at the time of Dale’s murder.
Lavoie will be arraigned Jan. 3, 2024, at 10:45 a.m. in the Coos County Superior Court.
Dale was convicted of second-degree murder for raping and killing Elizabeth Knapp, 6, in her bed in Contoocook on July 3, 1997, and was sentenced to serve 60 to 120 years in prison.
Dale was adamant that he was innocent and had been fighting to prove it for years.
In his last phone interview with InDepthNH.org before he died, Dale said he had received some important information about the DNA in the case that he said would prove his innocence.
Dale had been on the waiting list with the National Innocence Project for a number of years and said he received notification from the local New England Innocence Project that they were still reviewing his case.
Right after his death the state Department of Corrections refused InDepthNH.org’s request for the legal paperwork he had compiled.