John Geoghan was believed to have attacked more than 130 children

A Massachusetts district attorney said that Joseph Druce, already serving a life sentence for murder, will face charges later on Monday following the death of John Geoghan.

The former priest died on Saturday at the Souza-Baranowski Correction Center in Shirley, Massachusetts.

Druce, said to have links to right-wing racist groups, is alleged to have followed Geoghan to his cell and barricaded the door, the Boston Globe newspaper quoted prison officials as saying.

He then is said to have tied Geoghan's hands behind his back, gagged him and wound a sheet around the former priest's neck, tightening it with a shoe before beating him severely until prison guards realised what was happening and intervened, the paper said.

Geoghan, a central figure in the Catholic Church's abuse scandal in Boston, was taken to hospital, but died shortly afterwards.

He had been sentenced to six years in prison last year for molesting a 10-year-old boy.

Department of Correction spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Geoghan had been held in protective custody to shield him from the general prison population, but he still had some contact with other inmates.

'Terrified'

Druce, linked to the extremist group Aryan Nation and alleged to hate homosexuals, was convicted of the June 1988 killing of a bus driver who had picked him up while hitchhiking, the Associated Press news agency reported.

He's never going to hurt anybody again, and at the same time, he still had a lot of penance to do on Earth Alleged victim Michael Linscott

He reportedly committed the crime after the driver made sexual advances towards him.

Officials also told the Boston Globe that Geoghan had been "terrified" for his life throughout his stay at the prison and that he had been a target of abuse from both prisoners and guards.

"In the prison population, men who have killed or abused children are at the bottom of the totem poll," psychiatry professor Dr Jay Feierman from the University of New Mexico's medical school told Reuters news agency.

"The sociopaths somehow have this hierarchy about who is beneath them and child molesters are at great risk."

Geoghan was believed to have attacked more than 140 children over the last three decades.

'Penance'

The accusations against Geoghan go back more than 30 years.

Documents that came out during his trial sparked a scandal which has engulfed the Roman Catholic Church.

They showed that his superiors knew of the complaints against him, but they covered them up and moved him repeatedly to new parishes in the Boston area.

Reaction from Geoghan's alleged victims was mixed; while some felt that Geoghan had suffered a fate he deserved, others expressed disappointment that he had not had time to reflect on his crimes in prison.