NHL

Danton Pleads Guilty

By Jim Buzinski
Outsports.com

Mike Danton, formerly of the St. Louis Blues, pleaded guilty in federal court in East St. Louis, Ill, to conspiracy to commit interstate murder for hire, ending a bizarre plot that had led to speculation of a sexual relationship between the player and his intended male victim. 

“By pleading guilty, Danton, 23, avoids prison time in excess of 10 years and the possibility of additional charges, which had been threatened by prosecutors as the case progressed since his arrest in California on April 16,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said. “Under the likeliest scenario, Danton will serve between 87 and 108 months in prison. He hopes to serve most of it in his native country of Canada under an international prisoner transfer program, if approved by prison officials.” 

The name of the intended victim was not disclosed during Friday’s plea. But prosecutors have said previously in open court that his agent David Frost was the man Danton wanted killed. Frost has consistently denied he was the target. Danton’s alleged accomplice Katie Wolfmeyer, 19, is still awaiting trial, set for September. Danton is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 22. (Read complete details of the alleged plot in the FBI complaint). 

Danton’s plea ends one of the stranger cases to hit sports in recent years. It prompted speculation that Danton and his intended victim were gay lovers; included a hit man, Justin Jones, a Columbia, Ill., a police dispatcher who helped the FBI secretly tape Danton and Wolfmeyer plotting; featured Danton estranged family life; and centered on Frost, Danton’s junior hockey  coach described as a Svengali. Frost’s checkered career garnered as much attention as did the charge against Danton. 

The true nature of Danton's relationship to Frost might now never be known. Here is my best guess on the part of the case most of interest to our readers: 

Is Danton Gay?

The short answer: Who Knows? Danton hasn’t said either way and Frost denies this is the case. "It's the FBI's fault for leaving that (gay) idea open and they have apologized,” Frost said this spring. “Mike is going to sue every media outlet that said he was gay. Nothing could be further from the truth." 

There is no doubt that Frost and Danton have a close relationship (Frost either shared or was a frequent guest at Danton’s St. Louis apartment), though that closeness does not mean they were lovers; it might be more akin to that of a controlling authority figure and a confused kid. Based on the details of their long involvement, a sexual relationship (consensual or not) between Danton and Frost is still plausible. 

Frost has been called a monster, a master manipulator, cult figure, intelligent, cunning, nurturing, ambitious and a control freak who had unusually close and seemingly inappropriate relationships with some of the players he coached in Canada’s junior hockey circuit, especially Danton. This led some in the media to see Danton in a somewhat sympathetic light. 

“Personally, I wanted to pity Danton. I wanted to believe that he was a good kid lured into a bad situation. I wanted to believe he was a needy, gullible, vulnerable kid that latched onto a manipulator,” wrote Jeff Gordon of the Post-Dispatch. “I wanted to believe he was a victim, not a criminal. As a parent of two teenagers, I shuddered at the news accounts and hoped for a happier ending. I wanted Danton to get help, not a long prison term. …

”But Danton went to the courthouse Friday and took the fall. He owned up to one of the most idiotic, implausible, ill-fated criminal plots of all time.” 

In the end, I believe what I wrote when the case first broke: A plea was likely to prevent the most sordid details of the case from coming to light at a trial. Danton’s lawyer said at the hearing on Friday that his client pleaded guilty to "put all this behind him." Danton will take his secrets to his prison cell in Canada, the only goal he has achieved on or off the ice in a long time. 

May 2006 update:
Since this story still gets a fair amount of traffic, we thought it best to append the following so people can be updated:

Mike Danton, Revisited: The Mike Danton murder-for-hire story has always been bizarre. NHL player in 2004 tries to hire hitman to kill his Svengali-like agent. Despite being the target (he still denies it despite all the evidence), the agent still is close to the player, even advising him on a legal strategy as player sits in jail. Player pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and is in federal prison on a seven-year sentence.

Our interest has always been on the possible gay angle between Danton, the former St. Louis Blues player, and the agent, David Frost, but continuing reporting by Canadian media, especially the CBC, makes that angle appear nonexistent. A recent 40-minute report on the CBC's "Fifth Estate" news magazine offered a devastating portrayal of Frost as manipulative, lying and controlling, taking young impressionable players and separating them from their families. Danton is so estranged from his family that he changed his last name from Jefferson to Danton.

The CBC report detailed sex parties with "hockey bunnies," weird "bonding" rituals where Frost would tie up young teenage boys naked to beds (in cases never prosecuted), and phone calls from Danton in prison to Frost, where the agent demanded the player tell him he still loved him. Danton is said to have been "out of control" in his sexcapdes with women, including strippers. But no one has demonstrated there was ever anything sexual between Danton and Frost. "The idea that Danton was trying to murder his gay lover came not from the facts, but from an interpretation, or misinterpretation, of statements made in the criminal complaint," the CBC said in a report late last year, which is a pretty accurate assessment of what we and other media interpreted at the time.

Danton continues to defend Frost, writing a 36-page letter to the Ottawa Citizen last week saying their relationship should be viewed as more "father-son" than "player-agent." He credits Frost with rescuing him at age 11 from what he called a horrible upbringing. "Not once was I ever read a book at night and I can't remember ever receiving a hug or kiss," Danton wrote. He even credited Frost with getting him to brush his teeth every day and use deodorant.

Danton sent a hand-written press release to Outsports two weeks ago through an attorney stating why he thinks he should be transferred from a U.S. prison in New Jersey to one in Canada (which could trigger probation). Danton says he has been a model prisoner who is tutoring other inmates to get their GEDs. He said he wants to go to Canada to get proper "psychological treatment" and be in a "loving, productive family environment." The whole case has many angles -- weird, odd, bizarre and sick, but apparently none that are gay. (May 2, 2006)

July 16, 2004