RAYMOND M. BOISSONAULT
WESTFIELD – Although he has been in custody awaiting trial on charges stemming from a downtown shooting, Raymond M. Boissonault has accumulated more charges.
Det. Sgt. Stephen K. Dickinson said recently that he has completed an investigation into a Feb. 11, 2013, home invasion and will be bringing charges including home invasion, armed and masked robbery and kidnapping while armed against Boissonault and two co-defendants.
Dickinson said that the home invasion was not reported because the victims were drug dealers.
He said that he first got an inkling of the incident while interviewing the victim of the March 29 shooting on Birge Avenue in which Boissonault is believed to be implicated.
“If this shooting (had) never happened, we’d never know” about the home invasion, Dickinson said.
He said that when he confronted the shooting victim, who had initially said that his assailant was a stranger, the man admitted that he had lied but said he did so because he was afraid of ‘Razor’ Boissonault who he characterized as “crazy”.
The victim told Dickinson, in explaining his fear, that Boissonault had robbed and kidnapped a drug dealer on Moseley Avenue at gunpoint and had also bragged about stealing guns.
Dickinson, who knew that the incident the man described had not been reported to police, dispatched detectives to canvas the residents of the area he mentioned and the investigators learned that a house had been recently vacated because of some sort of incident involving a gun.
A detective spoke with the landlord who said that he had been trying to evict tenants who ultimately moved out due to “something about a gun.”
Dickinson said that he and his detectives were able to track down the former tenants but numerous interviews were necessary to get the full story because the participants, apparently because of their illegal activities, gave him “half-truths”, evasions and incomplete accounts before he learned what had transpired.
Dickinson said that he eventually learned that the tenant had been selling marijuana and had made an unusually large purchase to finance a Caribbean vacation.
He said that he found that the Moseley Avenue resident had made arrangements to purchase five pounds of marijuana for $15,000 and Boissonault had apparently learned of the transaction.
Dickinson said that the Moseley Avenue man left for his vacation but arranged for a relative to take delivery of the five pound shipment and sell it in his absence.
As Dickinson reconstructed the crime, the fill-in marijuana dealer received a call from a person (later determined to be a co-conspirator) who said he wanted to buy an ounce of marijuana, an uncharacteristically small amount for the regular customer who usually purchased pounds of the contraband from the dealer for retail sale.
Nonetheless, the dealer told the man that he did not currently have any inventory but expected to have some by 8:30 p.m. that evening.
At that hour, Dickinson was told, the dealer responded to his doorbell to find two masked men, one armed with a handgun and the other with a knife, on the stoop who forced heir way inside.
Once inside, the two intruders used zip ties to bind the hands of the dealer and his girlfriend and applied duct tape to their mouths.
The gunman demanded to know where the safe was and, after the duct tape was removed, the dealer told him that it was upstairs and that the key was in his pocket.
The dealer was taken upstairs and opened the safe for the masked men who seized $1,000 in cash, the only thing found in the safe.
The dealer was forced to call his supplier who said that he would be there soon and, while they were waiting, the gunman instructed his knife wielding sidekick to ransack the residence for valuables to steal.
When the supplier arrived, the gunman took a position behind the door and, when the supplier entered carrying a package, the gunman placed his gun at the man’s head and robbed him, taking both the marijuana and $1,500 he had in his pockets.
The two intruders told their victims that their keys and phones would be left in the mailbox and left with the five pound package of marijuana, $1,000 from the safe and the cash from the supplier as well as the booty from the apartment which included a video game system, a computer and other valuables.
The victims told Dickinson that they could hear that the men did not put their property in the mailbox as promised but the items were found in the snow nearby.
Dickinson said that the girlfriend of the dealer was traumatized by the experience and told him repeatedly that she had wanted to call police but was afraid of the repercussions from their illegal activities.
Dickinson said that in his repeated interviews with the victims, the dealer eventually identified the masked gunman as Boissonault.
He said that he knew it was Boissonault because, having gone to school with him, he recognized “the way he walked, the way he talked and his lips”.
The suspect with the knife was eventually identified in an interview with the co-conspirator who had confirmed the delivery time and subsequently bought the five pound marijuana package from Boissonault’s accomplice.
The co-conspirator identified the accomplice as “Junior”, a person who had served time with Boissonault and his identity was confirmed by telephone records and information from staff at the jail where the two men had been incarcerated.
All three men were charged, under the joint venture doctrine, with armed and masked robbery, home invasion, kidnapping while armed, conspiracy to violate drug laws and conspiracy to rob.
Dickinson said that the supplier, who he said was an otherwise respectable resident with a nine-to-five job, was “the most honest” of the participants and told him everything he wanted to know.
Dickinson said that the supplier gave him straight answers and said that he had been avoiding his supplier for the previous six weeks because he owed him $15,000 for the marijuana which was stolen from him.
Dickinson said that, before he completed his investigation, the man told him that he had made an arrangement to pay his supplier $100 per week for the next three years to satisfy his debt.
Although Dickinson seems to have a modicum of respect for the supplier, he has none for Boissonault.
Dickinson has previously brought charges, which are pending, against Boissonault, 22, with a last known address of 22 Lowell St., West Springfield, both for the downtown shooting and for a 2010 burglary of BG Sporting on Russell Road (detailed in a May 30, 2013 Westfield News story) in which five handguns were stolen.
Within months of that burglary, Boissonault was arrested by State Troopers on firearms, narcotics, larceny and motor vehicle charges and was then incarcerated from April, 2011 until he was released Dec. 31, 2012.
Since his release, Dickinson said, “He does a home invasion (and) he shoots somebody, all within three months.”
“This guy is really a bad guy” he said.
On Friday, Boissonault appeared in Westfield District Court before Judge Rita Koenigs for arraignment on the charges stemming from both the burglary and the home invasion.
As a result of the alleged home invasion incident, Boissonault was arraigned on three charges each of home invasion, kidnapping while armed with a firearm and firearm armed and masked robbery, as well as a single charge of conspiracy to violate drug laws.
Relative to the burglary, Boissonault was arraigned for five charges each of larceny of a firearm and possession of a firearm without a FID card and one charge of breaking and entering a building in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony.
In each case, he was held in lieu of $25,000 cash bail pending a Sept. 16 hearing.
