The US prison inmate who strangled child-molesting priest John Geoghan was convicted of murder after failing to convince a jury he was delusional when he killed one of the central figures in the Boston Archdiocese sex scandal.

A US inmate who strangled a convicted child molester priest behind bars said tonight that he decided to kill him after the clergyman brushed off criticism that he had “destroyed all kinds of lives.”

A grand jury charged prison inmate Joseph Druce with murder today over the death of paedophile priest and fellow inmate John Geoghan, who was found strangled and beaten in his prison cell, authorities said.

US PROSECUTORS investigating the prison death of defrocked priest John Geoghan want to know if security procedures broke down at the facility, allowing a neo-Nazi who hated homosexuals the opportunity to confront a convicted paedophile.

INVESTIGATORS are awaiting results of an autopsy on the catholic priest at the centre of a sex-abuse scandal who met a violent death in a Massachusetts prison.