Convicted pedophile priest Lawrence Hecker has died aged 93

NEW ORLEANS – Convicted former child rapist Lawrence Hecker has died nine days after being sentenced to life in prison, according to his lawyers.

Hecker’s attorney, Bobby Hjortsberg, tells WWL Louisiana that Hecker was at Hunt Correctional Center and was being transferred to Angola when he died.

His cause of death was not revealed.

Hecker, 93, pleaded guilty Dec. 3 to all charges – aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crimes against nature and theft for suffocating a teenager until he was unconscious and raping him in a church in 1975.

During the trial, the victim who drove the case that led to Hecker’s guilty plea described his rape in harrowing detail, our reporting partner at The Guardian said.

“I don’t forgive him,” said the victim, who was about 16 when the priest attacked him in 1975 in a church next to a high school the then-teenager attended.

Alluding to how Hecker’s superiors protected him from law enforcement for decades, he added: “In my opinion, the archdiocese should sit on his side – because they, too, are complicit in this.”

Other victims who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Hecker, now 93, and who agreed to testify at the trial that was averted by the clergyman’s guilty plea on Dec. 3, also spoke at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, including one who called him dismissed as “an animal”.

Hecker made national headlines in August 2023 when he went on camera for WWL Louisiana and the Guardian newspaper and confessed to “open sexual acts” with at least three teenagers and sexual contact with at least four others when they were too young to give their consent according to the law.

In the same interview, Hecker flatly denied ever having sex with anyone against his will. Two weeks later, he was indicted by a grand jury in New Orleans that accused him of doing just that.

In the months that followed, WWL and the Guardian obtained exclusive video of a 2020 deposition in which Hecker detailed how senior leaders in the archdiocese, including Archbishops Philip Hannan and Francis Schulte, knew about the abuse for decades and always knew him put back into service. Schulte even promoted him to monsignor in 2000 after Hecker admitted in a written statement to church officials in 1999 that he had abused young people.

Stay with WWL Louisiana for more on this developing story.

Click here to report a typo.

► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered straight to you by downloading the new FREE WWL TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.