Jacques will serve life sentence in Tucson

Michael Jacques' lawyers got their wish: The Randolph man who kidnapped, raped and killed 12-year-old niece Brooke Bennett will serve his life sentence at a federal penitentiary in Tucson, Ariz.

Jacques, 48, had been incarcerated at a federal detention facility in Brooklyn, N.Y., since shortly after his arrest in 2008. A Bureau of Prisons website stopped listing his location as Brooklyn late last week and disclosed his new, Tucson location, on Tuesday.

Jacques was sentenced to life without parole in May, 10 months after he pleaded guilty to kidnapping with death resulting as part of a plea deal that allowed him to dodge facing a potential death penalty sentence had the case gone to trial.

Jacques attorney David Ruhnke, in a sealed motion filed at U.S. District Court in Burlington prior to the sentencing hearing, had sought to have Jacques placed at the Tucson prison out of concern for his safety.

Jacques, as a serial sex offender, would be at risk of being killed by fellow inmates if he was put in a general population federal prison.

"It is the nature of the inmate code that the presence of such an inmate will not be tolerated by fellow inmates," the defense team's motion said in part. "The fact that he murdered a child makes the situation even worse."

The Tucson facility was "appropriate" for Jacques, the motion said, because 65 percent of its population are sex offenders.

Judge William K. Sessions denied the defense request at the sentencing hearing and ordered the motion unsealed.

A Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman on Tuesday declined comment on what went into the decision to assign Jacques to Tucson, saying the bureau does not discuss the cases of individual prisoners.

Ruhnke, reached at his law offices in Montclair, N.J., also declined comment.

According to police affidavits, Jacques plotted to kill Bennett of Braintree in the spring of 2008. As part of his plan, he fabricated a sex ring he called Breckenridge and tried to make it look like the ring was responsible for her death.

Jacques was arrested after police seized his computer during a massive search for Bennett and found emails indicating his involvement in her disappearance and death. He body was later found covered over with dirt a mile from his East Randolph home.

Court records show Jacques had forced a young girl to engage in repeated sex acts with him for five years prior to Bennett's death and coerced the girl into helping him lure Bennett to his home on the day Bennett was killed.

He was previously convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a teenage co-worker in 1992 and was given a deferred sentence for lewd and lascivious conduct with a 13 year-old girl in the 1980s.

Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or shemingway@freepressmedia.com. Follow Sam on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SamuelHemingway.