Brian Nagle sentenced to life
Published on April 14th, 1999
STONEHAM, MA - Former Stoneham resident Brian Nagle, 33, was sentenced to life in prison last Friday afternoon following his guilty plea to charges of rape of a child and indecent assault and battery of a child under the age of 14 last month. He will be eligible for parole in the year 2014.
According to Stephen O'Connell, spokesman for the Essex County District Attorney's Office, the sentence was well deserved.
"We think it was the appropriate sentence given his crime," O'Connell told the Independent. "Certainly there were many attempts to rehabilitate him, but obviously they failed."
O'Connell referred to Nagle's lengthy list of misconduct in past years. According to state records, Nagle had been convicted of several incidents of open and gross behavior. The Franklin Street resident was on probation at the time of his arrest and was in the midst of a one year suspended sentence when he was caught in the act of rape in the bathroom of a Burger King in Amesbury on May 14, 1998.
Amesbury police say that a passerby entered the men's room at the restaurant and saw Nagle raping a six-year-old boy in one of the bathroom stalls. The witness reportedly asked Nagle for his identity before the suspect took off into some nearby woods.
Firefighters near the scene spotted Nagle soon after hearing a description of the suspect's identity over the radio. They caught him after a short chase and detained him until police arrived at the scene. He was identified by the witness to the rape when police returned him to the scene of the crime.
"The life sentence was necessary to protect society," O'Connell said of the conviction.
Lieutenant Gary Ingham of the Amesbury Police Department credited Essex County Assistant District Attorney Robert Brennan with the conviction as well as his own officers.
"We pride ourselves on our performance so I'm certainly pleased with the outcome," he said. "I'm very pleased with the way our officers handled the forensic evidence and really locked the case up."
When asked about the sentence that Nagle received, Ingham stated, "I think that's (jail) the place for him. In our position, I think it's just as well that he's not on the streets. That's from a personal side as well as an officer's standpoint. I have two sons myself, so you probably know what I mean.
"He's a very sick person."
Nagle's attorney in the case, Joseph Amoroso, has disagreed with the state's contention that a life sentence was in order. He requested a lesser sentence of 10 to 15 years.
"I think that, given all the circumstances, 10 years is a fair period of time," he told the Independent in March.
Amoroso did, however, admit that his client still has serious psychological problems.
"I'm really in no position to know about that (whether he would repeat his crimes in the future). The type of behavior that he's exhibited in the past seems to have escalated over the years."
At the time of his arrest, Nagle was Stoneham's lone level 3 sex offender, a status indicating serious past sexual misconduct. Presently, there are no level 3 offenders either living or working in town. According to Lieutenant Gregory O'Keefe, there are approximately a dozen level 1 and 2 offenders within the confines of Stoneham, however."
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