Sex–abuse priest murdered in prison

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.

John J. Geoghan was allegedly strangled and beaten on Saturday by Joseph L. Druce, a fellow inmate in the maximum security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

The former priest molested nearly 150 boys over three decades, documents have shown, and became a catalyst for the sex abuse scandal that shook the foundations of the Catholic Church in the US.