Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Michael Scott Goucher and the Deadly Web of Homophobia

 

Michael Scott Goucher

Michael Scott Goucher

Michael Scott Goucher, 21, thought he was meeting Shawn “Skippy” Freemore, 19, for a second tryst when he left his Stroudsburg, PA, apartment on the night of February 3, 2009. Instead, Goucher was being set up for murder. Goucher met Freemore online. According to his MySpace page, Freemore identified as bisexual, but more interested in men. After the initial meet up in January, Freemore enlisted his friend, Ian Seagraves, 17, to ambush Goucher.

Goucher followed Freemore out of his car in a wooded area off of Snow Hill Road in Price Township. Seagraves, who was hiding under a nearby bridge, surprised Goucher, stabbing him in the neck. During the attack, his two assailants stabbed Goucher “45 to 50 times” according to police affadavits. They rifled his pockets, taking credit cards, his ID, and a cell phone. A DVD belonging to Goucher was later confiscated at Seagraves’ home. They covered his body with snow, and drove his car away.

Ian Seagraves & Shawn Freemore, courtesy of Pocono Record

Ian Seagraves & Shawn Freemore, courtesy of Pocono Record

When he was arrested, Freemore contended that he had acted alone and used the “gay panic” defense, saying that he resisted Goucher’s sexual advances in the car, and only after Goucher pursued him outside, stabbed him in the neck and stomach “about 20 times.” On February 11, 2009, Freemore showed police the location of Goucher’s body. Detectives secured a knife and a meat cleaver near the body, and a roll of duct tape with Seagraves’ fingerprint under the bridge. Seagraves, who apparently celebrated his part in the murder by changing his MySpace moniker to “ThrOwt Stabba,” was soon arrested, and the pair is now charged with premeditated murder.

This is one murder the FBI will surely miss in its Hate Crimes Statistics. The murky details of online hookups, closeted gayness, and bisexuality mingle with drug and alcohol addiction (on Freemore’s part at least), theft, and the involvement of the teenage men in a violence-exalting subculture called “the Juggaloes.” Anti-gay hate murder has been facilitated online before, as the story of Michael J. Sandy showed in 2006, as well as the role that homosexual self-loathing plays in the psychological makeup of some attackers. But this was a brutal, homophobia-instigated and motivated hate crime.

Michael Goucher at the Zion UCC organ

Michael Goucher at the Zion UCC organ

Goucher, a U.S. Army veteran, was a contributing member of his community. He worked for the local school system, and volunteered as the assistant organist of the Zion United Church of Christ in Stroudsburg, where he had impressed the pastor and the membership with his talent, sincerity, and friendliness. He was captain of the East Stroudsburg Crime Watch. He also was a selectively closeted gay man, hiding his sexual orientation from his community. Whatever motivation he might have had for keeping his orientation secret from those he lived among, fear was surely part of it.

His killers will be judged according to the evidence. Allegedly, they own the guilt for this terrible crime. But Freemore and Seagraves are, in their own ways, victims of American-style homophobia, too. They were products of the same school system as Michael Goucher. They loathed gay men enough to turn a consensual sexual encounter into a bloodbath, with all the marks of homophobic overkill. They victimized Michael Goucher, giving way to their own self-loathing and to the assumption that savagely murdering a gay man was somehow sanctioned by their community.

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March 30, 2009 - Posted by | Bisexual persons, Blame the victim, gay men, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, military, Pennsylvania, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Popular Culture, stabbings | , , , , , , , , ,

8 Comments »

  1. I grew up with Mike, and although his murder has hit us all very hard you have your facts very truly wrong. Mike was very open about his sexual orientation since High school. I in fact attended the Same High school and was a part of our GSA(gay, straight alliance) group. WE DO NOT live in some tiny homophobic community, filled with rednecks as you would suggest. Mike only if ever hid the fact that he was gay when he was serving his county and only to his superior officers. You are painting a very incorrect picture of my beloved and now lost friend. Please serve his memory well and get your facts straight, and not change and/or corrupt them to serve your own personal agenda.

    -Jessica P.

    Comment by Jessica | April 30, 2009 | Reply

    • Thank you for your comment, Jessica. We are sorry for your loss. Information for this story was gathered from several news sources in the local area, as well as the on-air commentary of your friend’s aunt and uncle. We hope justice will be done when the alleged murderers are brought to trial.

      Comment by unfinishedlives | May 1, 2009 | Reply

    • I am Mikes Uncle, we raised Mike through his teen years and he considered us his family. He was NOT a closet gay man. He told us when he was 14 he was gay. He kept if from his US Army supervisors.

      Now you have the real facts from his uncle. If you need to contact me please do so.

      Comment by William Searfoss | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  2. Mike, I have not known you personally.
    But I truly feel for you and your loved ones.
    May you find peace in HIS embrace.

    Comment by Fiona Lefevre | June 7, 2009 | Reply

  3. [...] the extreme savagery of these attacks as in the case of 45 stab wounds in U.S. Army veteran Michael Scott Goucher’s murder in East Stroudsburg, PA, and Duanna Johnson’s shooting death in Memphis, TN.  The [...]

    Pingback by Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes the Highest Since 1999 « Unfinished Lives | June 16, 2009 | Reply

  4. [...] then his body was set afire in a guard shack in the vain attempt to destroy evidence of the murder. Army veteran Michael Scott Goucher was lured into a fatal ambush by local youths near his home in Pennsylvania. These four are [...]

    Pingback by Repeal and Remembrance: Gay Military Martyrs and the End of DADT « Unfinished Lives | December 19, 2010 | Reply

  5. Mike was loved. and by many. i had the pleasure of knowing him in his last years of his life. he will always have a place in my heart and of many others. Mike will never be forgetten. i still send my prayers to him because his death is still a nightmare to me. he was one of my best friends. may he rest in peace.

    Comment by Tara G. | February 18, 2011 | Reply

  6. [...] Private First Class Michael Scott Goucher, a veteran of the Iraq War, was murdered near his home in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on February 4, 2009 by an assailant who stabbed him at least twenty times. Known locally as “Mike on a Bike” by neighbors and friends, Goucher was an assistant organist for a congregation of the United Church of Christ, and Captain of the neighborhood Crime Watch.  He also was a selectively closeted gay man, hiding his sexual orientation from his community. Goucher survived deployment in Iraq, only to meet death at the hands of homophobes back home. [...]

    Pingback by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is History: We Must Not Forget Its Cost « Unfinished Lives | September 20, 2011 | Reply


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